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HIGH HURDLES 






By JOSEPH 
HUSBAND 


With Illustrations by 

M. LEONE 


BOSTON AND NEW YORK. 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMP 


THE RIVERSIDE PRESS CAMBRIDGE 


1923 







COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY P. F. COLLIER & SON CO. (INC.) 
COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY JOSEPH HUSBAND 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 


) 


k HRitoerstof Ureg* 

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. 


MAY 2 4 *23 V 




C1A704G46 


ft 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Harry crushed the letter in his hand and 

LEANED HIS ELBOWS ON THE WINDOW SILL 


(p. 189) Title-Page 

Harry felt his arm tense for a blow 42 

“If I AM CALLED QUICKLY I CANNOT SAY WHAT 

MAY BE LEFT TO YOU” 74 

Struggling with his awkward burden 154 

Slowly she lifted her face to his 218 










HIGH HURDLES 


i 

From the open window Harry Gray watched a 
white cloud mount slowly above the blue slate 
roof of the opposing wing of Randolph Hall 
and climb smoothly into the weak blue autum¬ 
nal sky. It was Indian summer, there was a 
mellow warmth in the pale sunshine, and the 
air was redolent with the pungent aroma of 
burning leaves. Like a languid animal he 
sprawled on the green cushion of the window 
seat, an open volume of De Maupassant in¬ 
verted rooflike on his knee. Down in the court¬ 
yard a half dozen men with notebooks under 
their arms walked slowly down the path which 
edged the central plot of lawn. They were soph¬ 
omores, and as they paused for a brief moment 
before one of the entrances around the little 
quadrangle, one — a pleasant-faced lad with a 
dilapidated felt hat pulled down over his nar¬ 
row face — glanced up at the windows of the 
dormitory. 


2 


HIGH HURDLES 


“ ’Lo, Harry!” he called as his eyes and 
Gray’s met. “Getting in some licks for the 
hour exams?” 

Gray half lifted himself from the cushion and 
rested his elbows on the stone window ledge. 
“Going in town to-night,” he answered. “Come 
on up; I’m not doing anything.” The other 
nodded, and Gray slowly climbed down from 
the window seat. Across the room another broad 
window gave a sense of spaciousness to the 
apartment and looked down on the gray shingled 
roofs of a row of ancient houses that lined 
the east side of Dunster Street. Between the 
opposing windows a large table half filled the 
center of the room. A fireplace, the brick soot- 
blackened by countless wood fires, jutted 
slightly from the center of the south wall; on 
either side of it were well-filled bookcases, and, 
to the right and the left of these, half-opened 
doors disclosed the bedrooms of Gray and his 
room-mate. The woodwork was a dark dull 
oak, and the walls, where they might be seen 
between the frames of innumerable English 
sporting prints, were covered with a deep green 
fabric. 

There was a sound of feet on the circular 


HIGH HURDLES 


3 


stairway as Gray walked over to the table and 
shuffled among the piles of books and magazines 
for a cigarette box. He was tall, with a big-boned 
frame, as was attested by his large hands, but 
in the long, lean fingers there was an indication 
of another attribute that was also evident in the 
broad, high forehead and the almost sensitive 
droop of the corners of his mouth. His eyes 
were very blue and wide, set beneath pale yellow 
eyebrows. 

In character with that inherited refinement 
which his hands would seem to indicate, the 
dark tweed suit hung loosely, but with perfect 
regard for the rangy body beneath; from 
the soft white collar of his tennis shirt a tawny 
necktie struck the single note of color. Son of 
Phelps Gray and grandson of Leander Gray, he 
bore in every line of his body and in every 
movement that unconscious and unassertive 
assurance that was the heritage of a long line 
of generations of New England ancestors born 
to the purple, and in their own eyes the rightful 
inheritors of all the best which life affords. 

The door was flung open and the youth of the 
dilapidated hat came into the room. With a 
careless lunge he flung his books on the table 


4 


HIGH HURDLES 


and stretched out luxuriously on the window 
seat. “What did you say about town to¬ 
night?” he asked. “Show?” 

Harry lit a cigarette and regarded him for a 
moment. “I shouldn’t smoke, I suppose, train¬ 
ing and all that sort of rot. Show? Sure! I’m 
getting fearfully bored with this existence I’m 
leading. Let’s have dinner in town and take 
in a show in the evening.” 

The youth on the window seat idly fingered 
the pages of the French novel, an English trans¬ 
lation in the rich binding of a subscription 
edition. “All right; I’ll get the tickets. But 
why all this training, Harry? Can’t see 
for the life of me what you see in football.” 
He became serious as he continued, convincing 
himself of the strength of his argument. “You 
go down there every afternoon and roll in the 
mud, and where does it get you? You got 
kicked off the freshman squad. Hope you don’t 
think you’re going to get your ‘H’ and become 
Harvard’s star athlete.” 

Gray flecked his cigarette ash on the rug. 
“Don’t be an ass, Stuyve. Just because you’re 
obviously unfit doesn’t let me out. I hate the 
whole business, but what can I do? You didn’t 


HIGH HURDLES 


5 


have a father who played center rush and has 
never forgotten it; you didn’t happen to inherit 
this superb build which is mine own. There’s 
Crosby; what do you suppose he’d say if I quit? 
I suppose I’ll make a dub and all that sort of 
thing, anyway, but it would look rotten if I 
didn’t appear to try for something, even though 
I know I won’t make a team and wouldn’t 
want to if I could.” 

Stuyvesant Baring nodded assent. “You’re 
right enough, Harry,” he commented. “Guess 
that’s the handicap of coming from a good 
school; you are expected to perform and shine 
at something. Gray must do his duty! You 
ought to be a product of governess, tutors, and 
Switzerland, like me, then you could make or 
mar your own destiny, and no one would give a 
rap about it. How you coming out on your 
exams?” 

“I’m tutoring at the Widow’s; guess that will 
pull me through.” 

The distant clanging of a bell came in through 
the window, a persistent note that rose above 
the grinding bass of the trolleys on Massachu¬ 
setts Avenue. 

“Let’s eat!” Baring gathered his books 


6 


HIGH HURDLES 


under his arm. “To-morrow’s Saturday; what 
you doing over Sunday?” 

“Going out to Milton for the week-end; the 
Lockhearts.” 

Gray slammed the door behind him, and 
together they clattered down the three flights 
of stairs. On the path outside the door a short 
youth with large shell-rimmed spectacles and 
a ready grin joined them. 

“Hello, Felix,” was Gray’s greeting. “How’s 
the editor?” 

Felix appeared not to have heard them. He 
turned his head slowly. “And how are Damon 
and Pythias?” he queried. “I must create a 
social column in the ‘Crimson’ and engage your 
contributions. Or would you prefer to write 
criticisms, or eulogies of musical comedies?” 

With a good-natured shove Gray jostled him 
off the path, then linked an arm through his 
elbow. “Don’t blame us, Felix. What would 
you have us do? Gather news for your 
wretched newspaper, or spend our evenings at 
the Union or Brooks House?” 

“Come with us to-night, Felix,” Baring broke 
in; “we’ll buy you a nice dinner and take you to 
a lovely musical comedy that will inspire you for 
weeks to come.” 


HIGH HURDLES 


7 


Felix shook his head decisively. “ Flutter 
away, you gay butterflies; I’ve some editorials 
to write and much studying to do. I can’t be 
bothered with your delightful frivolities.” 

In amiable conversation they swung out 
through the iron gate and, three abreast, 
tramped up the narrow street toward the Yard. 
Through the leafless trees the sun cast their 
shadows before them as they walked. At the 
corner of Massachusetts Avenue a massive 
building of brick and limestone flanked the 
entrance to Dunster Street, and as they passed 
its deep-set entrance two men emerged from the 
doorway. 

“I wonder when they’ll begin to elect from 
our class?” said Baring in an undertone. “You 
ought to hear something pretty early, Harry. 
Your father’s club, wasn’t it?” 

Gray nodded. “Father was a member and so 
was Uncle Bill. He isn’t actually any relation 
at all, but he looks after the estate for father, 
and he’s always been a sort of member of the 
family. I guess that ought to help; family does 
count, you know.” 

Felix gave a cynical look at Gray. “You 
forget that I am a Chapman, Harry — Felix 


8 


HIGH HURDLES 


Chapman of the Chapmans of Waterloo, Iowa.” 
A smile turned the corner of his mouth. 
“Perhaps that will make my acceptance into a 
final club difficult. My father, by the way, 
never went to college; he was what you might 
call an agriculturist.” 

“You don’t understand, Felix,” Gray retorted. 
“It isn’t anything really against you if your 
father was a farmer. Some of the final clubs 
here have been going on for generations; it’s 
only natural that fellows whose fathers and 
uncles have been members should have a 
preference.” 

The elusive smile continued on Chapman’s 
lips. “Now, Harry, you are trying to tell me 
that who your father is or was, and what your 
name may be and where you come from, are the 
things that count here, and not the man himself. 
Possibly, in part you may be right, but I’d have 
a pretty mean opinion of my college if I didn’t 
believe that it’s the man himself who makes or 
breaks himself.” 

They had paused on the curb. Gray 
shrugged his shoulders and laughed lightly. “I 
suppose you’d count being captain of the chess 
team a higher social qualification than — 
than — ” 


HIGH HURDLES 


9 


“Than being a Gray of New Bedford,” Felix 
broke in. Then he laughed outright. “Take 
up chess, Harry; perhaps your ideas may alter a 
bit. You’ll find some mighty interesting 
fellows prefer chess even to a musical comedy.” 
He waved his hand good-naturedly and plodded 
across Massachusetts Avenue toward the Yard. 
Gray and Baring walked slowly down the street. 

“Odd chap, Felix,” said Harry. “You’ve 
got to admit he’s bright and all that, but I 
shouldn’t think he’d joke about his father being 
a farmer. Blood will tell, you know. He 
rooms in a funny little hole in the top of 
Stoughton — went up there once to see him 
about something. Odd chap, Felix.” 

Baring nodded. “I suppose he’ll go through 
and never make any club, and he’ll be just as 
happy with his editorship on the ‘ Crimson’ and 
his debating. Well, it’s lucky for the ‘Crimson’ 
there are enough fellows who like that sort of 
thing.” 

The bell in Massachusetts Hall struck up its 
clangor, and a few minutes later the big iron 
gateways of the Yard began to discharge their 
several currents of young manhood into the 
broad street. 


10 


HIGH HURDLES 


“Well, I’m off to my twelve o’clock. Going 
down to practice this afternoon?” 

Gray nodded. 

“Where’ll we meet to-night, Stuyve?” he 
asked. “Better come up to my room and we’ll 
go in together.” 

“All right, I’ll be with you about six. So 
long. See you there.” 

The sun had set in a cloudless sky, and the 
yellow west reached up and merged into a vault 
of flawless blue in which already a few pale 
stars flickered white and dim. Along Tremont 
Street the electric lights flooded the sidewalks 
with a yellow radiance. In the semidarkness 
beyond the gaunt bare limbs of the trees in the 
Common rose in a dark tangle, through which 
here and there the white gleam of an arc light 
shone steadily. Above the trees lifted the black 
silhouette of the roofs of Park Street and 
Beacon Hill. 

Gray and Baring walked slowly, their talk 
now and again interrupted as a congestion of 
the crowd caused them to swing into single file. 
At the corner of an intersecting street they 
edged into a doorway and stood for a minute 
as in a quiet backwater. Baring plucked his 


HIGH HURDLES 


11 


watch from his pocket. “It’s almost seven,” he 
said. “Let’s go down to the grill and order 
dinner. I’m half starved!” 

A few minutes later they turned into the com¬ 
parative darkness of a side street and clattered 
down a flight of marble steps. 

The grill, a long, low-ceilinged room, was 
warm, and the faint smell of food and flowers 
hung almost imperceptibly in the air. The 
head waiter recognized them and led the way 
across the wide floor to a small table. Shaded 
lights intensified the whiteness of snowy linen. 
There was a hum of intermingled voices in the 
air, and from above, somewhere in the great 
hotel, came the sound of distant music, the 
plaintive melody of an operatic medley. 

They stretched their legs beneath the table 
and studied the menu, the head waiter inter¬ 
polating apologetic suggestions. Baring leaned 
back in his chair. “Guess that will hold me,” 
he commented. 

Harry watched his companion for a moment, 
his blue eyes intent to observe the effect of what 
he was about to say. “Do you remember what 
we were talking about this afternoon — 
football?” he asked. “Remember how I told you 


12 


HIGH HURDLES 


how much I hated the whole business? Well, 
I’m through! I got fired off the squad this 
afternoon.” 

“You got fired, dropped from the squad?” 
Baring repeated, a real concern in his small 
dark eyes. “What happened? What did 
Crosby say when he fired you?” 

For a brief second Gray hesitated for an 
answer. “Oh, he didn’t say much; wasn’t time. 
Said that it was evident I hadn’t a chance, so 
I might as well quit. He suggested, I thought 
rather sarcastically, that I didn’t like football, 
and the result was I was no good at it. That 
isn’t true, though, of me in particular; half the 
squad hate it, but they keep on because they 
have something the team and the coaches can 
use. I haven’t. I haven’t the weight or the 
speed.” 

“You’re lazy,” interjected Baring. 

“Guess I am. Never was an athlete, though 
I did make the second team sixth-form year at 
school. What I didn’t quite get, though, was 
the way Crosby spoke. He seemed to imply 
something he didn’t say. I don’t think he 
likes me, and it’s quite mutual.” 

“Probably doesn’t approve of you.” 


HIGH HURDLES 


13 


“Doubtless. People don’t usually approve of 
what they don’t understand. I don’t expect 
Crosby to understand me or my purpose at 
college.” Gray leaned forward and traced the 
pattern in the linen cloth with his fork. “He 
may be a New Yorker, but who ever heard of 
him until he came here and took up athletics? 
I tell you, Stuyve, I’m not after that sort of 
thing here. ’Course I would like to make the 
team, but, after all, that’s just one element in 
these four years.” 

“Do you know, Harry, I admire you; it takes 
poise to see things this way.” Baring speared 
an oyster and dipped it in the cocktail sauce. 
For a moment they were both silent, for Harry 
was reluctant to interrupt a promised analysis 
of himself that was far from unpleasing, and 
Baring seemed to be gathering his thoughts for 
a clearer definition of his statement. “You 
know, Harry, that Harvard has meant more to 
you than it has to me; it’s done more for you. 
My family is nothing to be ashamed of, and I’ve 
plenty of money when it comes to that, but 
you know what I mean—clubs and that sort of 
thing. Why, you’re slated for a place in any 
final club you want, and an early ten on the 


14 


HIGH HURDLES 


Institute. I suppose I’ll tag in somewhere, but 
that’s about all.” 

“I know, Stuyve. You see, you were tutored 
and went to school abroad; you didn’t come in 
with a crowd of fellows as I did. Then your 
family all went to Yale, while I have the back¬ 
ground of all my family here before me. Of 
course the fact that you are a gentleman and 
the son of a gentleman is bound to be 
recognized.” 

“What do you want of Harvard?” Baring 
broke in. 

“What do I want? Why, I don’t know. It’s 
just a phase in the life of all the Grays to grad¬ 
uate from Harvard. I suppose I want enough 
decent marks to get my degree; I want to make 
the best clubs and have a darned good time for 
four years. I guess that’s about it, as far as 
I’m concerned. What do you want?” 

Baring intently regarded the plate before 
him. “I want something, Harry. You won’t 
understand because you have it. I want 
popularity, the kind you could have. I’m not 
unpopular. I don’t mean that, but I do envy 
the fellows who make teams, and go through 
the Yard as though they knew every man in 


HIGH HURDLES 


15 


college. I’ve a few good friends, like you, and 
I get good marks, but that’s about all I’m 
getting out of it. I’m sort of lost in the crowd.” 

Harry glanced at him with surprised amuse¬ 
ment. “Oh, come, Stuyve, cheer up. You 
talk like a preacher. I say we make an evening 
of it. I may as well celebrate my escape from 
slavery, even if you would like to have me 
make the team. Do you know a fellow named 
Schroder, comes from Buffalo or some place out 
west? Yes, that’s his name, Schroder. I met 
him once at one of those deadly class smokers, 
and to-day — I doubt if I’ve seen him since — 
he slapped me on the back as we were coming 
out of Sever, and said: ‘Hello, Harry.’ I don’t 
mean to be overly exclusive, but there’s a limit, 
Stuyve, isn’t there?” 

“That’s just what I mean, Harry: you don’t 
like that sort of thing. But if you don’t have 
a care,” Baring warned, “you’ll get some of the 
fellows down on you who really count in things. 
I’m by nature no more a mixer than you are, 
but you can’t draw off too far. The crowd 
won’t follow. That’s what hurts me. I know 
just a few fellows, and I’d like to know more, 
only I don’t know how. You could know 


16 HIGH HURDLES 

everybody if you wanted to, and you don’t want 
to.” 

Harry laughed good-humoredly. “No, I 
don’t,” he assented. “When I have a congenial 
little group of friends, why should I waste time 
sporting around with Tom, Dick, and Harry, 
doing a lot of things I don’t enjoy, seeing a lot 
of fellows I don’t care for? I suppose that’s 
class spirit. Well, it doesn’t interest me.” He 
leaned back in his chair and smiled expansively. 
Then he nodded his head sharply to the right by 
way of indication. “ ’George; but that’s a 
pretty girl over at that table in the corner. 
Look at her, Stuyve. I wonder who the man 
is?” 

Baring did not reply for a moment. The 
conversation was exercising a disquieting effect 
on him. Somehow he realized that Gray was 
sliding smoothly along life at a tangent, and 
his obvious good humor and self-satisfaction 
annoyed him. When he spoke there was 
seriousness and a tinge of bitterness in his 
voice. 

“Don’t you care for anything or anybody, 
Harry? Gad, but you’re self-satisfied. You get 
fired from the football squad, and when you 


HIGH HURDLES 


17 


ought to be kicking yourself about the Yard 
for being a quitter, you go in town and stage a 
celebration. Lord, but you’re satisfied to be 
Harry Gray. I wish I had your build and your 
ability to get on with people. I’d do something 
with it.” 

The first part of Baring’s comment had a 
sting that pierced even the casual veneer with 
which Gray had overlaid himself, but the little 
appeal to his vanity in the reference to his 
personal characteristics relieved him, and his 
tightened lips relaxed into an indulgent smile. 
He lifted his glass in mock toast. 

“Here’s to you, old fossil, perhaps I’d be 
benefited by some of your seriousness, but 
remember what old Omar preached. Good 
stuff, something about sighing for the glories of 
the world and the world to come; but, after all, 
the wise chap lives as he goes and takes the 
cash. I’ll be hanged if I’m going to spoil four 
good play years. Let the future take care of 
itself.” 

They reached the theater just before the first 
act was concluded and found their places, 
climbing in over the knees of the occupants of 
the aisle seats. Baring watched the mad and 


18 


HIGH HURDLES 


incoherent fantasy with fixed eyes and 
unsmiling lips. His thoughts kept reverting to 
Gray and all his assurance of the future. 
Somehow he wondered if Gray, the Gray who 
could be conscious of no wrongdoing, were not 
riding for a fall. But Gray, oblivious to his 
friend’s perturbation, peacefully watched the 
stage with tolerant amusement, his smiling lips 
slightly drawn back from his fine, even 
teeth. . • (. 

The moon had risen and gleamed brightly on 
the slate roofs of the dormitory. In the dark¬ 
ness of the entrance on Mount Auburn Street, 
Harry groped for his key. Finally the lock 
responded. They stood for a moment in the 
open door. Gray flung an arm affectionately 
across Baring’s shoulders. “Don’t take it too 
hard, old top, what I said about myself during 
dinner. I guess I am pretty optimistic, and I 
guess things always have been and always will 
be rather soft for me, but I do think you are a 
bit hard on me. I’ll admit that perhaps I 
haven’t mixed around enough, but I guess that 
won’t affect my life much a dozen years from 
now.” 

Baring avoided an answer. “Well, night, 
night, Harry. Do it again some evening.” 


HIGH HURDLES 


19 


Gray walked firmly down the long hall 
and mounted the winding stairs to his rooms. 
On the landing on the second floor he paused 
for a moment while he felt for his room key. 
Abruptly a door opened and two men stepped 
out into the dimly lighted stairwell; from the 
doorway the light of the room shone brightly 
in his face. 

“Good-evening, Gray.” The speaker was a 
broad, heavy-set man with a curious grace of 
movement that could be noticed in his extraor¬ 
dinary lightness of step even in the darkness 
of the hallway. 

“Evening, Dixon.” Harry felt a sudden and 
unaccustomed embarrassment. 

The two men clattered down the stairs, and 
a note of laughter sounded, cut short by the 
door slammed behind them as they went out 
into the courtyard. 

Slowly he climbed the final flight and turned 
the key in the lock. Down in the quadrangle 
of the building some late arrivals raised voices 
in uncertain song. From an open window 
somewhere across the court a sleepy voice 
exhorted freshmen to be seen rather than heard. 
The lock stuck, and he hammered on the panel. 


20 


HIGH HURDLES 


For a long minute he waited. Then a light 
glinted through the crack beneath the door, the 
bolt turned, and a pajama-clad lad with a 
disheveled shock of curly brown hair regarded 
him critically. 

“Hello, Clarence; sorry to trouble you. 
Lock’s busted again.” 

The room-mate regarded him dully with 
sleep-filled eyes, then turned and retreated to 
his bedroom. Harry picked up a magazine 
from the table and lighted a cigarette. For a 
few minutes he tried to read, but his thoughts 
constantly returned to the incidents of the day. 
He recalled the look on Crosby’s face that after¬ 
noon, and he found himself wondering if, after 
all, there might not be something in Baring’s 
point of view. Finally he undressed slowly and 
climbed into bed. 

It was an hour later than usual the next 
morning when he arose and closed his bedroom 
window. Outside a heavy gray mist hung over 
the roofs and intensified the darkness of a 
lowering sky. It had been drizzling, and the 
street and sidewalk were dark with moisture. 
Altogether, it was a depressing beginning to 
another day. 


HIGH HURDLES 


21 


He switched on his light and critically 
regarded himself in the mirror above the fine 
mahogany lowboy that served him for a 
bureau. Around the rim of the glass a dozen 
engraved invitations were stuck haphazard in 
the frame; the check in the comer of each 
indicated that all of them had been acknowl¬ 
edged ; he was punctilious in his social 
obligations. 

The living room was gloomy, but it was at 
least warm, and there was a faint pungent 
aroma in the air, a blend of wood smoke and a 
freshly lighted cigarette. Clarence’s door was 
open, and the closed window and tumbled bed 
indicated that he had gone to breakfast and 
probably to an early recitation. It was his 
cigarette that Harry smelled; Clarence always 
smoked while he was dressing. The logs in the 
fireplace were white and charred from last 
night’s fire. With a heavy brass-handled poker 
Harry pushed the fragments together. There 
were a few ruddy sparks, and a bit of newspaper 
soon incited a blaze. Pulling a big chair with 
well-worn leather cushions before the fireplace, 
he stretched his bare feet toward the grateful 
warmth. With languid interest he observed 


22 


HIGH HURDLES 


his feet; like his hands, they were long and 
slender; unconsciously he approved of them. 

Off in the Yard the college bell announced the 
hour of nine. He remembered that he had a lec¬ 
ture at ten, one of the several courses in English 
that truly appealed to him, and he must dress. 
A cold tub temporarily revived his spirits; the 
firm resiliency of healthy youth was already 
reacting on him physically, and he began to slip 
into his clothes with unexpected alacrity. 

While he knotted his tie his eyes scanned the 
invitations about the mirror. One with his name 
and the date filled in in large feminine hand 
requested his presence at dinner on the evening 
of the twentieth; another card, next to it, was 
an invitation to a dance on the same evening. 
He made a hurried calculation and discovered 
that this was the morning of the twentieth. He 
hoped that he would feel less depressed by 
evening. 

There were three pictures on the top of the 
lowboy, two of them large photographs in severe 
frames of silver, each engraved with a small 
crest. One of the photographs was of a tall, 
slender man of perhaps fifty, dressed in a yacht¬ 
ing suit. A pointed and slightly drooping mus- 


HIGH HURDLES 


23 


tache partly concealed the likeness of father to 
son. The other was of his mother, a plump 
woman of forty with delicately cut features and 
a slight lift of the eyebrows which gave a touch 
of superciliousness to her expression. A collar 
of pearls encircled her well-molded throat. She 
had died when he was in the second term at 
boarding school. 

The third picture occupied a central location 
immediately below the mirror. It was a small 
snapshot of a girl, in a red leather frame. She 
had evidently been playing tennis, for she held 
a racket in her hand and a broad ribbon con¬ 
fined to a semblance of order her profusion of 
dark hair. 

Harry’s eyes lowered from the invitations to 
the girl’s picture. She too would be dining that 
evening at the Copleys’ and they would all go 
on together to the dance. The thought refreshed 
him more than the cold splash in his tub. Even 
the raindrops spattering against the window 
assumed a cheerful tone. 

With his raincoat collar about his ears he 
plunged across the damp courtyard and into 
Massachusetts Avenue to a dairy lunchroom. 
Perched on a high stool, he consumed his coffee 


24 


HIGH HURDLES 


and eggs in pleasant absorption. With a tinge of 
relief he realized that he would not have to 
report as usual at Soldiers’ Field for practice 
that afternoon; he would spend it reading or in 
some friend’s room, and at the close of the 
day he could prepare himself leisurely for the 
evening. 

As he went out of the door he encountered 
Jack Dixon on the sidewalk. Vaguely he recalled 
his meeting with Dixon the night before on the 
stairway. Undoubtedly Dixon knew that he had 
been dropped from the squad. It annoyed him 
that he resented Dixon’s knowledge of the 
incident. 

“Hello, Gray; going to be in your room after 
lunch? I’d like to see you for a few minutes. 
Something I want to talk over with you.” 

Harry hesitated, but evasion seemed impos¬ 
sible. “Yes, I’ll be in,” he answered. “What 
time?” 

“One-thirty?” Harry nodded. “All right. So 
long,” and Dixon sped down the sidewalk, his 
broad back swaying like a dancer’s in motion 
with his curious swinging step. 

During the lecture Harry’s thoughts con¬ 
stantly reverted to this appointment. He liked 


HIGH HURDLES 


25 


Dixon, admired him and approved of him, for 
Dixon was not only one of the class officers, a 
good scholar, and a versatile athlete, but he 
came also from a Boston family that Harry 
respected. Harry wondered if Dixon was to dine 
at the Copleys’ that evening; it was not unlikely, 
unless it interfered with training. 

After class Harry encountered his room-mate 
in the corridor and together they walked through 
the Yard back to their rooms. Occasionally 
Harry wondered why he and Clear roomed to¬ 
gether. When Clarence had proposed the union 
there seemed no valid and ready objection. He 
liked Clarence, not particularly because he was 
an agreeable companion, but chiefly because he 
knew that Clarence was dependable. It was 
Clarence who paid the bills and it was Clarence 
who was always at home, interminably reading. 

“Hear you got dropped from the squad.” 

Harry expected the remark. “Yes,” he said 
casually, “just as glad.” 

“I’m afraid it will hurt you,” Clarence con¬ 
tinued; “a fellow can’t afford to peter out that 
way. At least you ought to act as if it meant 
something to you. If there was a good reason, 
it would be one thing, but everybody knows 


26 HIGH HURDLES 

you’re dropped because you won’t make an 
effort.” 

“I guess I can weather the storm.” He was 
a little piqued at Clarence’s insistence. 

“Probably you can, but it won’t help you 
make an early ten on the Institute, or elect you 
into a club.” 

Harry pointedly changed the subject and they 
walked back to the rooms for the most of the 
way in silence. 

Sharp at one-thirty there was a knock at the 
door. Clarence was out and Harry was glad of 
his absence. “Come in,” he called. 

Dixon pushed open the door and sat down on 
the window seat. “I suppose you are wondering 
the why for of this formal appointment?” 

“I’ll admit you have me in the dark.” 

Dixon slid his legs off the bench and straight¬ 
ened up as though he wished to emphasize the 
seriousness of what he was about to say. 

“Well, Gray, it’s just this. Take it, please, 
as a friendly effort on my part. Really, it isn’t 
a pleasant one. Now, here’s what I want to say 
to you. You got fired off the squad yesterday. 
You got fired because you are lazy and you 
weren’t working. It’s a bad thing for you, and 


HIGH HURDLES 


27 


it’s a bad thing for Harvard when a chap with 
your physique and training simply washes out. 
It isn’t every fellow, Gray, who has your build. 
That’s why it’s bad when you get dropped. It 
isn’t your body that can’t play football, or your 
mind; it’s you who won’t. Gray, this is just a 
friendly suggestion, but if I were you I’d try to 
play the game here a little different. Some of 
the fellows will say hard things about you. You 
can’t afford it. No one can.” 

For a minute neither spoke, then Harry lifted 
his eyes from the burning logs in the fireplace. 
“I get your point, Dixon, thanks for bothering, 
but you don’t understand. I’m willing enough 
to play football, but I admit I don’t like it; that 
isn’t what I enjoy here.” 

“Are you simply here for the fun of the 
thing?” asked Dixon. 

“Well, yes and no. I want a degree and that 
sort of thing, but it’s more than that to me. I 
enjoy certain friendships here: Stuyve Baring’s, 
for instance. I enjoy the social side of it: things 
in Boston, dinners and dances. I’d like to shine 
in athletics, but I can’t for the life of me see 
why some of you fellows get so all-fired serious 
over it. When I graduate I hope to take a couple 


28 


HIGH HURDLES 


of years in the Law School — every man should 
know enough law to handle his own affairs — 
then I probably will go into business. My uncle 
has suggested Cotton brokerage. I think I’ll give 
it a try, at least. Honestly, I can’t see why 
there’s all this fuss about whether or not I care 
if I am dropped from a football squad. What 
does that have to do with these other things?” 

Dixon watched him intently while he spoke. 
“Gray,” he said, “you are like a lot of fellows 
who go through here and don’t do any real good 
or harm, just miss all the best of it. Harvard’s 
too big to force a fellow along a path; it gives 
him a fair start, but if he doesn’t see the way 
it leaves him to work it out for himself. All I 
want to say is that you’re too good a fellow to 
hang off this way. Mix up more in class activi¬ 
ties; don’t be so darned exclusive; get into the 
life of the place.” 

He got up and edged toward the door. “Please 
pardon my butting in this way, but I’ve got this 
place at heart and I want to see you a factor 
in it.” 

Harry walked with him to the door. “Thanks, 
Dixon, very decent of you to do this. I’ll try 
to get into things occasionally. So long.” 


HIGH HURDLES 


29' 


The door closed and he walked back to his 
chair by the fire. Dixon’s admonition annoyed 
him, perhaps because in the few friendly words 
he recognized an unassailable truth; perhaps 
because it offended his pride that anyone should 
criticize him. 

Suddenly the afternoon ahead of him seemed 
a long and barren period of inaction. Up to now 
football had occupied him. Well, that evening 
he was dining in town at the Copleys’. There 
was a dance later and he would see Ellen Daven¬ 
port. The thought reassured him. 

He put on his hat and walked over to Baring’s 
room, but Baring was out. Slowly he crossed 
the Yard. The worn pine stairs of Stoughton 
creaked beneath his feet as he climbed the two 
flights which led to Felix Chapman’s room. A 
voice answered his rap, and he turned the knob. 
Felix was standing beside one of the deep-set 
windows, hat on and a book in his hand. 

“Just off to a lecture,” he announced. “Sit 
down and make yourself at home. I’ve got to 
go over to the Crimson after my lecture, but 
stick around and toast your toes; good books 
on the table.” He hurried off busily and Harry 
relaxed in a Morris chair in front of the fireplace 


30 HIGH HURDLES 

with a book plucked from the heterogeneous pile 
on the table. 

Day faded and Harry laid aside the volume 
and for a long half hour watched the sparkling 
embers in the dying fire. Then he looked at his 
watch; it was half past five. The air was still 
and frosty and lighted windows glowed with a 
warm yellow light as he crossed the Yard. On 
the other side of Massachusetts Avenue he 
turned into Leavitt’s for a package of cigarettes. 
In the back room a crowd of men moved about 
the pool tables; there was a hum of voices and 
the occasional sharp click of the colliding balls. 

As he turned to leave he abruptly faced a tall, 
dark man who leaned on the cigar counter, 
watching the players. With a sweep of his eye 
Harry marked the unshapely gray suit and 
frayed four-in-hand tie, but beneath the careless 
dress he could not but notice the long lean lines 
of a body alive with the unconscious grace of an 

t 

athlete in the pink of training. It was Arthur 
Clark, a classmate whom Harry had known 
chiefly as a member of the football squad. Clark, 
Harry had been told, came from some Western 
town; Des Moines, he remembered. During his 
freshman year he made few acquaintances, but 


HIGH HURDLES 


31 


he won his numerals on the freshman football 
team and when spring came he showed an ability 
on the diamond that brought him rapidly to the 
fore. And in the past few months he had become 
a talked-of candidate for the varsity team. 

The dark eyes of the Westerner met Harry’s 
with a cold, appraising penetration. “Hello, 
Gray; didn’t see you on the field to-day. Sick?” 

Harry colored and became as suddenly indig¬ 
nant at this obvious betrayal of his self-con¬ 
sciousness. “No, I’m not sick.” He did not 
want to grant the man an answer, but the dark 
eyes followed him and drew the words from him. 
“I’ve quit football,” he added. 

“I don’t see exactly why you quit.” There 
was something irritating in Clark’s calm voice. 
“You always looked like good material.” 

“Perhaps you don’t. I can’t see why I should 
explain my actions to every casual acquaint¬ 
ance.” Harry had not meant to answer so 
sharply, but Clark’s questioning irritated him. 

“Admitting I’m a casual acquaintance; 
there’s a sort of sense of responsibility around 
here that perhaps prompts me to observe that 
your preferences aren’t the only things you 
ought to consider.” 


32 


HIGH HURDLES 


“I’ll thank you to mind your own business.” 

The dark eyes still calmly regarded him; 
there was no movement in the slouched body 
that leaned against the cigar case. “My business 
now is Harvard’s business,” Clark answered 
slowly. “I don’t think we can let fellows like 
you quit their responsibilities without comment.” 

“Do you mean to call me a quitter?” Harry 
shot back. 

“Yes.” 


II 


For a second Harry felt his arm tense for a 
blow. Hotly the blood surged through him. 
Then he turned and walked out of the store, 
his head high with the indignation that momen¬ 
tarily obsessed him. The cold evening air was 
like a sudden awakening. “Quitter!” he mut¬ 
tered. “I should have hit him.” His mind 
pictured the brawl in the crowded store, then 
interference, and the humiliation of explanation. 
He did not consider the immediate outcome, it 
was the publicity that appalled him; and, he 
realized, the dark, steady eyes of Clark had 
browbeaten him. A sense of shame overwhelmed 
him. 

Instinctively he quickened his step. In the 
eyes of a man whom he considered his inferior, 
he had lowered himself. “I’ll even up with him.” 

Clarence was out and Harry was glad to be 
alone while he dressed. From the frame on the 
bureau the face of his father regarded him, dis¬ 
passionate, confident, self-satisfied. His eyes 
wandered to his mother’s picture. There too 


34 


HIGH HURDLES 


was the same expression about the eyes and 
mouth. Almost childishly he had turned to the 
photograph for sympathy and understanding, 
but he knew that his father could not under¬ 
stand. He sat down on the bed and held his face 
in his hands. Why didn’t his father understand? 
Now as never before in his life he needed help. 
He was groping blindly. For the first time the 
armor of his pride had been pierced. What was 
it that had suddenly gone wrong with his world? 
Then a curious thought possessed him. Was his 
father right? Was life as he had represented it 
to the boy, and later to the growing man, the 
life that was real? A pall of loneliness descended 
on Harry, a sense of helplessness surged through 
him. Hot tears of resentment wet his fingers... . 

It was half past seven when Harry reached 
the Copleys’, a massive brick house on the river 
side of Beacon Street. The maid took his hat 
and coat and he walked up the sweep of stairs 
to the second floor. He was a trifle early and 
the other guests had not yet arrived. Beyond 
the wide doorway which led from the white 
paneled hall was the library, a large room with 
a great bay window overlooking the river. The 
walls were lined with books halfway to the ceil- 


HIGH HURDLES 


35 


ing, and above the bookcases were several fine 
portraits of early members of the family. A 
large oil painting of a ship hung over the fire¬ 
place, a picture Harry always noticed because 
marine paintings were one of his father’s hob¬ 
bies; the family fortune came from the sea. A 
fire was spitting and crackling on the hearth and 
he walked noiselessly over the heavy carpet and 
backed comfortably toward the grateful warmth. 

There were footsteps in the hall, and Mr. 
Copley came into the room. He was a slender 
man with close-cut gray hair and an angular 
face marred by a slight scar on the right cheek. 
Harry knew him as a prominent graduate of 
Harvard and an eminent architect, but chiefly 
as the father of Helen Copley, a prim, plain 
girl with a cutting tongue, whom he had met at 
the Friday evening dances the year before. 

The older man came forward. “Good evening, 
Gray. Excuse me for not being here before you, 
but you were on time, which in these days is 
early.” 

Two other men followed into the room. One 
was Dixon, his broad shoulders and slim legs 
accentuated by his evening clothes; the other 
was Ned Little, another Bostonian, in Harry’s 


36 


HIGH HURDLES 


class. The girls and two more men arrived a few 
minutes later, the former in a chattering, laugh¬ 
ing group, gay in light dresses. Harry was talk¬ 
ing to his host when the men entered. He looked 
up casually. Arthur Clark stood in the door¬ 
way. By a strange coincidence this was the first 
time that Harry had dined with Clark in Boston. 
The occurrence of the afternoon flashed across 
his mind. It was unlucky that they should be 
brought together at the same dinner party on 
that particular evening. But it was not for that 
alone that Harry resented Clark’s presence. 
Clark was an outsider, a product of an environ¬ 
ment that was foreign to all that he understood. 
It irritated Harry that this example of self¬ 
advancement should be included in a society 
which he considered almost a caste. 

He met Clark’s glance and nodded stiffly. 
Then abruptly he brushed him from his mind, 
for in the knot of girls he caught sight of Ellen 
Davenport, her dark hair and eyes distinguish¬ 
ing her from her companions. With apparent 
unconcern he broke away from his host and 
edged through the little group, stopping for a 
moment to give his hand to Mrs. Copley and 
to express one of the trite conventionalities 
always so ready on his lips. 


HIGH HURDLES 


37 


“Hello, Ellen.” 

She turned with a smile that gave him a white 
flash of gleaming teeth between her red lips. 
“Why, Harry, how nice that you are here.” 

He shook hands with Helen Copley, who stood 
beside her. Somehow he could not help compar¬ 
ing them as they stood side by side; the one 
radiant with the perfect flush of youth, the 
other a pale plain girl with sharp collar bones 
and the angular face of her father. 

He turned again to Ellen: “May I have supper 
with you to-night?” 

She nodded assent. “Mr. Clark asked me, but 
I thought I would reserve it. No, Harry, this 
isn’t a compliment to you. I would have said 
yes to the first acquaintance who asked me.” 

“Don’t you like Clark?” he blurted. 

“Oh, I hardly know him.” She leaned near to 
him and spoke in an undertone, the soft fra¬ 
grance of her hair enveloping him as he listened. 
“He is so Western; very nice, I suppose, but he 
takes so much for granted.” 

A few minutes later they went down to din¬ 
ner, the girls half filling the white stairway like 
a spray of wistaria as they descended. 

Harry found his place across the table from 


38 


HIGH HURDLES 


Ellen and he noticed with ill-concealed annoyance 
that Clark was seated at her left. He spoke 
politely but without apparent purpose to a tall 
dark debutante on his right, a lithe graceful girl 
who, he knew, was an ardent horsewoman. As 
a boy Harry had prided himself on his own 
horsemanship, for in those days his father main¬ 
tained a well-filled stable. With conventional 
interest he inquired if she had hunted yet this 
autumn. Her fulsome reply gave him leisure to 
watch Ellen and the man beside her. 

He had known Clark only slightly, for Clark 
had entered college from a Western high school, 
and Harry with his clique of school friends 
increased the radius of his acquaintance slowly. 
In fact, he remembered seeing Clark for the 
first time at a class smoker in the spring of his 
freshman year. Clark had entered with condi¬ 
tions and been debarred from football his fall 
term, but by the midyear he had cleaned his slate 
and flung himself with impetuous energy into 
the class activities. 

Somehow Harry resented this strenuous prog¬ 
ress. Class meetings and class politics seemed 
to him below the level of his social standing. In 
his class he recognized various distinctions. He 


HIGH HURDLES 


39 


realized that a large proportion of his classmates 
earned their way entirely or in part; he knew 
that the circle of his intimate friends comprised 
but a slim minority. And yet the Bourbon tend¬ 
encies of his inheritance drew him each month 
closer into the group of elect which he so clearly 
preferred. To mingle in the affairs of the whole 
class seemed to him an unnecessary lessening of 
natural distinctions. Politics was for the poli¬ 
ticians, a gross lot at best. He was ready to 
criticize and regret their depths of depravity, 
but he shrank from contaminating himself. Like 
most men, he expected the miracle of reforma¬ 
tion through the intervention of others. 

Across the table Clark was monopolizing the 
conversation with Ellen. During the perfunctory 
small talk which he conducted with his neighbor, 
Harry watched them with troubled interest. He 
had met Ellen Davenport in his school days. 
Through occasional contact their acquaintance 
had ripened into intimacy, and in the past half 
year he had recognized in himself a deeper emo¬ 
tion. For generations her family had contributed 
to the growth of the Commonwealth. In recent 
years, however, their income had diminished 
until it reached a point where it seemed incum- 


40 


HIGH HURDLES 


bent on Ellen, particularly when she thought of 
her younger brother David, still a schoolboy, to 
consider learning a vocation against the contin¬ 
gencies of later years. To Harry this gave an 
additional incentive: to be able to lay at charm¬ 
ing feet the wealth of which he was the logical 
inheritor seemed part of the role of prince mag¬ 
nificent which it pleased him to play. Not yet 
had he told her of his desires, but he realized 
that she sensed them and he believed his cause 
was not without hope. 

Dinner over, there was a pleasant flurry of 
donning wraps and overcoats. They drove to 
the hotel, and merged into the tide of youth 
that gathered there. A flood of rhythmic music 
and warm air came from the door of the ball¬ 
room. Harry stood for a brief moment in the 
entrance. Ellen had not yet appeared and he 
hurried to meet his hostesses that he might be 
ready to claim the first dance with Ellen. As 
he turned back toward the door he saw her enter, 
Arthur Clark at her elbow, and a sudden rancor 
filled him, an incoherent hatred for this pushing 
product from a world beyond his horizon. 

Standing among the crowd of stags at the 
lower end of the ballroom, Harry watched Ellen 


HIGH HURDLES 


41 


and Clark weave their recurrent circles. He was 
tempted to cut in, but something held him back, 
his inherent sense of dignity, perhaps; and he 
waited. In a final lingering chord the orchestra 
ended the last encore and Harry hurriedly made 
a tour of the gilt chairs of the ballroom. She had 
disappeared. With a curious sense of mortifica¬ 
tion he walked out into the long hallway. There 
he saw her, in a far corner, in earnest conversa¬ 
tion with Clark, who bent over her with a pro¬ 
prietary intimacy that stirred in Harry instant 
resentment. 

He faced them. “May I have this dance, 
Ellen?” 

She hesitated. “Mr. Clark has just asked me 
for it. Perhaps you will let me give you the one 
after this one?” 

“Thank you, I will wait for it.” He ignored 
Clark, who had risen and was standing beside 
her. With a hot flush on his face he turned and 
walked down the hall. The music began again, 
the halting sensuous measures of an old-time 
waltz. He thought of Ellen and wondered 
whether she would dance it with Clark, his arm 
around her slender waist, or whether they would 
sit out the dance in the privacy of their remote 
corner. Either possibility offended him. 


42 


HIGH HURDLES 


His head boiling with his emotions, he walked 
down to the lounge. The little room was con¬ 
gested with men, a host of black-clad youths, 
their gleaming linen, sleek-brushed hair and 
ruddy cheeks marking them of that lusty broth¬ 
erhood that finds itself universally at home. 
Casually a man at his elbow offered him a drink 
from a silver flask. He accepted and gulped 
the fiery liquid hurriedly. He was again in the 
corridor. His ears sensed the mad tuneful tumult 
of the latest fox-trot, his nostrils breathed the 
warm scented air. The music ended in a sharp 
blare of sound and Ellen and Clark appeared 
in the doorway. 

Harry walked quickly forward. “My dance, 
I believe.” There was an injured note in his 
voice. Again he ignored Clark’s presence. 

Ellen’s frank, open glance almost confused 
his tense concentration. “You will find us where 
we were sitting before, when you came before 
the last dance.” They mingled in the outpour¬ 
ing from the ballroom and Harry pressed back 
against the wall. 

With the first note of the dance he found her. 
As he appeared, Clark rose and left them. Harry 
dropped into Clark’s place beside her. “Ellen,” 



HARRY FELT HIS ARM TENSE FOR A BLOW 





HIGH HURDLES 43 

he said, “don’t let’s dance this; I want to talk 
with you.” 

She nodded acquiescence and looked at him 
with a tinge of inquiry in her dark eyes. 

He plunged hurriedly into the subject; too 
long, he felt, had he concealed his purpose. 
“Ellen, this is, I know, a beastly place to say it, 
and all that, but — fact is, I love you. Will you 
marry me?” 

She was silent, but he saw the deepening color 
on her cheeks and the troubled look in her dark 
eyes. “It is absurd, Harry. You should remem¬ 
ber I came out only this winter and you are still 
a sophomore. Moreover, I am not ready to 
answer such a question. I like you, Harry, but 
I may not marry ever, and I want to know 
others better.” 

Her voice had grown lower as she spoke and 
her eyes turned from him and seemed to look 
at the thick rug beneath her feet. 

“I wouldn’t have spoken,” he said, “but just 
to-night I realized I have taken too much for 
granted. That fellow”— there was just a sug¬ 
gestion of a sneer in his intonation of the word 
—“likes you. I can see that. I don’t want you 
to make a mistake, Ellen.” 


44 


HIGH HURDLES 


She looked up, a tinge of resentment in her 
face. He saw her lips, red against the gleam of 
her fine teeth, framing her words before she 
spoke: 

“Harry, I do like you, but I wouldn’t marry 
you to-day, now, if I could. Do you want me to 
be frank? It’s hard, but I think you do. Life 
has been very easy for you. You haven’t ever 
had a chance to try yourself. You speak of 
Clark. I know what a struggle he has had, and 
I think it is a fine thing that he is doing for him¬ 
self — and for Harvard.” 

She stopped speaking for a moment. The cor¬ 
ridor was deserted, but past the wide door of 
the ballroom surged the mazing currents of the 
dancers. “Do you want me to be very frank, 
Harry?” she asked. He nodded wonderingly. 
Somehow he was confused by the unexpected 
decisiveness of her rejection. He had always 
expected an immediate acceptance when he 
offered her his heart and name. 

“You are not conceited, Harry,” she con¬ 
tinued. “It’s more that you’ve never had a 
chance. Your money and the pride you hold in 
your family — the place that you felt was all 
ironed out for you at Harvard — have made 


HIGH HURDLES 


45 


you take life for granted. You have liked me. I 
didn’t realize how much. But you thought if you 
wanted me all you would have to do was to ask 
me.” Her cheeks flushed at her words. “Sup¬ 
pose I should some day love you. My father is 
a poor man, and, although we have enough to 
live on in a simple way, there is nothing but his 
salary. If anything happened to him, I would 
have to work, to help. My husband shall not 
support my family. I’m proud, desperately 
proud. I won’t accept a man because certain 
material things are his. He must win me with 
something else.” 

Her mood changed swiftly and she laid a 
slender hand on his knee for a passing second. 
“You’re not playing the game, Harry; you’re 
not doing the things you should, and, worst of 
all, you don’t care when you fail. It doesn’t 
matter if it’s success in scholarship, or athletics, 
or class activities, or anything that’s good and 
a part of the life that Harvard stands for. You 
must do something well.” 

“Perhaps you don’t understand, Ellen; per¬ 
haps you don’t realize what life is. Does that 
occur to you?” His words came quickly, for he 
was stung by the sympathy in her voice. He 


46 


HIGH HURDLES 


rose and stood beside her. “I appreciate the 
intention in what you have said. But I really 
don’t believe you appreciate the —” He hesi¬ 
tated to proceed. 

“The honor you have done me,” she con¬ 
tinued for him. She stood beside him and her 
loveliness overwhelmed him. “Please forgive 
me, Harry, if I’ve hurt you. It’s because I do so 
truly like you that I want you to be big — the 
biggest man that Harvard can graduate.” . . . 

It was two weeks later, a dark, chill evening 
in early November. In their pleasant living 
room the two sophomores were stretched in 
languid ease before an open fire where a pile of 
logs still moist with watery sap was sizzling and 
steaming with a sociable sound. Harry, his feet 
shod in an ancient pair of worn pumps, fingered 
his rapid way through the novel he held in his 
hands, skimming the pages for an incident which 
might hold his attention. The heat of the fire 
penetrated the thin soles of his slippers, and 
with ease of movement that is a part of the 
heritage of young manhood he slung his long 
legs over the arm of the chair and sank still 
deeper in the cushions. His room-mate, from 
another chair facing the other end of the fire¬ 
place, regarded him with lazy interest. 


HIGH HURDLES 47 

“What are you going to do about that test 
in History Four?” he inquired. 

“Continue to read this highly uninspired 
novel, Clarence; and what are you going to do?” 

Clarence grinned. “Guess Fll go over to Dan’s 
room. There’s a little game there to-night. 
Want to come?” 

Harry tossed the book away from him. “Sure. 
What’s that noise?” 

They both listened; then Clarence pushed up 
a window. Cold, damp air blew into the room. 
Far off in some distant street was a sound of 
men’s voices, now almost distinct, now lost as 
the wind eddied in the street. Intently they 
listened. Of a sudden the sound was clear and 
near, a deep, measured, marching chant, with 
a few high-swelling notes at the end of the 
refrain. 

“Well, it’s evident that Clarence Clear isn’t 
on the second fifteen,” muttered his room-mate. 

“Or Harry Gray,” said the other. 

The voices grew louder, then suddenly the 
marchers turned the corner at Massachusetts 
Avenue and the deep refrain filled the quiet side 
street. Clarence turned out the lights. From the 
darkness of the third-story window they could 


48 


HIGH HURDLES 


watch unseen. Down the street came the march¬ 
ers. Here and there windows across the street 
in Russell Hall darkened. The strange proces¬ 
sion passed beneath them and disappeared in 
Mount Auburn Street. Clarence closed the win¬ 
dow and turned on the lights. 

For generations of college life the Institute 
has each year elected in secret session its mem¬ 
bership from the sophomore class. Selected in 
ten groups of fifteen, the total from each class 
has represented but a small proportion of the 
total number of sophomores. The order of the 
election has always conferred a vague distinc¬ 
tion. To be the first man on the first fifteen is 
an honor, and in the same way a place on the 
first fifteen is more desired than a place on the 
second. 

Although Harry had for some time realized 
that there was no chance of his making the first 
fifteen, the knowledge that the second also had 
passed by him gave an unaccustomed tinge of 
despondency to his mood. For the first time in 
his recollection he was sharply conscious of a 
doubt of the security of his position among his 
fellow classmates. Jack Dixon had been elected 
first man on the first. Harry could not fail to 


HIGH HURDLES 


49 


recognize Dixon’s rare combination of athletic 
powers, scholarship, and personal magnetism. 
But there were several others whose early selec¬ 
tion he could not so readily understand. They 
had not entered Harvard from any prominent 
preparatory schools, their names were unknown 
socially, they were not even the product of a 
Boston or New York environment. 

As though stirred by some telepathic impulse, 
Clarence interrupted his moody pondering. “I 
heard at dinner to-night that Felix Chapman 
made the second fifteen,” he said. 

“Felix Chapman! Felix Chapman!” Harry 
repeated. The information stunned him like an 
unexpected blow. “Why, he—” He relapsed 
into silence. 

“Some of the fellows were talking about you,” 
Clarence continued. “Not pleasant talk, but I’ll 
pass it along for your own good, in friendly- 
little-room-mate spirit. Said you were going to 
get a few jolts before the year is out for lying 
down at football.” 

“Who said that?” Harry demanded. He got 
up from his chair, his face red with anger and 
mortification. “It’s a lie; I didn’t quit. I was 
dropped because I was the last candidate on the 


50 HIGH HURDLES 

squad, and I was last because I hate the damn 
game.” 

“Your answer moves me to do some nice 
moralizing, but I won’t. I don’t blame you, but 
it’s hard luck, that’s all. Come on; let’s go over 
to Dan’s. I can afford to pick up a bit of change 
after last night.” 

The two men found their hats on the window 
seat. “You may have to stake me a little,” Clar¬ 
ence suggested. “I’ve got to win to get even.” 

The air in Dan Herrick’s room was hot and 
pungent with tobacco smoke. Herrick in a tweed 
Norfolk jacket looked like some obese animal. 
He crouched behind a huge pile of red and white 
and blue chips. A single brilliant light flooded 
the green cloth thrown across the table. With a 
plump, manicured hand Herrick waved welcome 
to his guests. His face was round and by no 
means unpleasant: a ruddy face, in which self- 
indulgence was evident, crowned by a crop of 
long black hair smoothly brushed from the white 
line of the parting low above his left ear. “Pull 
up chairs.” He waved his hand vaguely. “Just 
six of us. Have a cigarette, Harry — eh, 
Clarence?” 

They drew up to the table. Stuyvesant Bar- 


HIGH HURDLES 


51 


ing, Catewell, and Hawley were already seated. 
These classmates formed an intimate little 
clique. 

The chips were divided and the cards flut¬ 
tered about the table. As in all things, Harry 
played a nonchalant game. Beside him sat 
Baring, playing quietly, with little banter or 
comment, discarding wisely and accepting the 
fortune of his cards with quiet philosophy. 

An hour passed and the pile in front of Her¬ 
rick’s seat had increased steadily. But Clarence 
had repeatedly drawn on the banker to recoup 
his frequent losses. 

“Best pot of the evening.” Herrick raked a 
mass of chips from the center of the table. 
“What time shall we quit? Being the heavy 
winner, I’m agreeable to any suggestion.” 

“Let’s stop with the first hand after it strikes 
one,” Clarence suggested. He was very pale and 
his eyes were reddened with the smoke. Beside 
him lay a pile of cigarette stubs. “Let me have 
another twenty-five dollars’ worth, Dan — I’m 
cleaned again.” 

Even Harry was now playing with an attempt 
at caution, for, although he had not lost as 
heavily as Clarence, he was badly in the hole 


52 


HIGH HURDLES 


and his exhausted bank account would not be 
replenished by his monthly check for several 
weeks to come. The situation was annoying, but 
at intervals in the past similar situations had 
occurred and an unpleasant conference with his 
father had wiped out his debts. 

One o’clock struck, and with embarrassed 
jocularity Herrick announced the sum of his 
winnings. All eyes regarded Clarence. With 
forced gayety he screwed his thin lips into a 
smile. “Guess I’m the star loser. Haven’t got 
it on me; check-book either. Here—” He 
scrawled his I O U’s on some sheets of letter 
paper. “Guess this will have to do.” Ruefully 
he regarded the figures behind the dollar signs. 
“This certainly isn’t my lucky day.” 

The room-mates walked back in silence and 
without comment went hurriedly to bed. To the 
complacent mind of Harry Gray sleep came 
readily and he awakened the next morning as 
from a stupor, the slender pajama-clad figure of 
Clarence standing over him. 

He thrust a printed post card under Harry’s 
nose. “I’m to call to see the dean at half past 
two to-day! Came in this morning’s mail.” 

“Probably doesn’t amount to anything.” 
Harry realized the lameness of his reply. 


HIGH HURDLES 


53 


“On the contrary, you know that inasmuch as 
it’s addressed to me it unfortunately probably 
does mean something. You don’t think he’s 
going to award me a scholarship or invite me to 
go to Florida with him this Christmas?” he 
added caustically. 

Harry regarded the summons. “What’s on 
your conscience, Clarey?” he asked. “You know, 
or you ought to know better than any one else 
what it’s all about.” 

“Sure, I know: it’s any one of a lot of things, 
and, for that matter, you’re lucky this isn’t 
addressed to you. I’ve had a good allowance 
from home and I’m in debt up to my ears in 
every shop on the Square. Last night I tried to 
win because I needed cash, and I left a lot of 
samples of my handwriting that don’t mean any¬ 
thing because I’m overdrawn at the bank.” 

“The dean hasn’t called you because you’re 
in debt.” 

“Probably not, unless some tradesman I owe 
money to has gone to him about it. Where I’m 
in bad is my marks. Last year I stood pretty 
well, mostly C’s; what you call a gentleman’s 
average. So far this year I’ve flunked about 
half my courses. You know how I came out on 


54 


HIGH HURDLES 


the hour exams,” Clarence laughed grimly. 
“Looks as though I was going to graduate — out 
the back door. What I want to tell you, Harry, 
is that I’m scared; and you’ll get it next if 
you’re not careful.” 

Clarence tumbled into his clothes and with a 
notebook in his hand darted out of the room. 
Harry heard his feet clatter down the stairs and 
then the slam of the heavy street door. Slowly 
he shaved and bathed. The sharp chill of the 
cold water sent the blood tingling through him, 
and his smooth skin glowed pink as he dried his 
body with a huge towel. He dressed slowly, 
changing a necktie already adjusted when his 
eyes told him that the color failed to harmonize 
perfectly with the dark gray of his suit. 

He was undisturbed by Clarence’s outburst, 
but there was much that Clarence said that gave 
him food for thought. The one thing that par¬ 
ticularly annoyed him was Clarence’s reference 
to the “Gentleman’s average of C.” He had 
been accustomed to have Clarence accept his 
dicta at face value. He demanded of Clarence a 
certain hero worship. 

Harry recalled perfectly his comments on the 
C grade of scholarship. He felt that an average 


HIGH HURDLES 


55 


of A or B indicated a concentration on studies 
to the exclusion of all else. Men who received 
such marks were “grinds.” Vaguely he felt that 
such men studied for high marks because they 
knew of nothing else with which to occupy them¬ 
selves. For him or his immediate friends to 
sacrifice their pleasures for the laurels of schol¬ 
arship was absurd. He believed that to do both 
was an impossibility. On the other hand, to fail 
in a course was in a degree humiliating. Hence 
he preferred to speak of the average grade of C 
as the “Gentleman’s mark.” He would not have 
admitted that he could not attain A’s if he 
desired; but he preferred to leave the scholastic 
honors to the grinds. 

There were many activities in the busy life of 
the university whose significance Harry failed 
to appreciate. Once at the close of freshman 
year Felix Chapman had expatiated on debating 
and its importance as an undergraduate activity. 
Harry’s reaction had been characteristic and 
had drawn from Felix an explosion of condem¬ 
nation. He had forgotten exactly what he said, 
but his comment had been to the effect that 
debating had his approval, but it was impossible 
for him to conceive of himself participating. 


56 


HIGH HURDLES 


At four o’clock he called up Ellen on the tele¬ 
phone and asked if he might come in for tea. 
He had not talked with her since the night of 
the dance, but she had been constantly in his 
thoughts and the unexpected outcome of their 
talk that evening had brought sharply before 
him other situations which were equally dis¬ 
turbing. He was half conscious of the fact that 
he was drifting; that he had drifted perhaps 
farther than he knew. Her peremptory refusal 
had galvanized him momentarily. It had hurt 
his pride; it had offended him. Notwithstanding, 
it was to Ellen that he turned for consolation 
and reassurance. Her voice, when he asked if 
she would be in, was strengthening in its calm 
sweetness. As she spoke, he visualized her — 
her slender, perfect youth, her poise, her gra¬ 
ciousness. 

The Davenports’ house had no distinguishing 
feature, but Harry’s steps turned automatically 
up the short brick walk. The maid opened the 
door and, recognizing a frequent visitor, left 
him to go up unannounced to the library on the 
second floor. Ellen had been reading and still 
held her book in her hand when she met him. 
A single table lamp lighted the room, throwing 


HIGH HURDLES 


57 


her into a darkened silhouette and tinging her 
hair with a warm light. There was an inspira¬ 
tion in the cool touch of her fingers, a thrill that 
seemed to intensify his emotion. 

She sank back into her deep chair and he 
dropped carelessly down on the hassock at her 
feet. Their talk ignored the occurrences of the 
night he had asked her to marry him; she spoke 
of the usual things. But there was a sense of a 
new situation in his words when he asked: “You 
are going to the Yale game with me?” 

She laughed. “You have already asked me 
twice and I have promised each time. Of course 
I will.” For a minute neither spoke. A spark of 
coal snapped from the grate and he pressed out 
its gleam beneath his foot. “Perhaps I ought 
not to say this, Harry,” she resumed, “but I had 
hoped I might see you play. I wanted you to 
make good on the squad. You could have made 
good. I believe in you.” 

He looked humbly at her as she spoke, the 
gentleness of her voice cutting him at every 
word. “I should have tried harder,” he admitted. 
The admission shocked him. He would have 
liked to recall his words. 

For a while they talked of other things, but 


58 


HIGH HURDLES 


the subject of the game again asserted itself. 
They spoke of various players and weighed the 
chances of the probable outcome. Clark’s name 
was mentioned. 

“I shouldn’t be surprised if he got into the 
game,” Ellen commented. 

“How well do you like Arthur Clark?” It had 
nothing to do with her remark, but the name of 
the man seemed to flare like a red streak before 
Harry’s eyes. 

“I like Arthur. I like him better than I used 
to. Perhaps it’s because I admire him. As father 
would say, ‘He started back of scratch’ at Har¬ 
vard. He has forced his own way.” 

“He isn’t a gentleman.” 

“What do you mean by that?” The brutality 
of Harry’s remark stung her into a defense of 
the man. 

“I mean,” he qualified, “that he is pushing 
and too aggressive. It’s probably because he 
comes from some obscure place and doesn’t 
understand.” 

“You mean,” she corrected, “that he isn’t a 
snob.” There was a flush in her smooth cheeks. 

Harry realized that he must withdraw or he 
would strengthen the man he criticized. “I guess 


HIGH HURDLES 


59 


it’s just that I personally don’t like him. He 
doesn’t go with our crowd. He doesn’t belong, 
somehow. It’s awfully decent of you to stand 
up for him this way.” 

Suddenly he felt very humble. “Perhaps I 
should be a little aggressive myself,” he con¬ 
tinued. “Ellen, sometimes, only lately, I’ve sort 
of felt that Harvard isn’t giving me recognition. 
You know, I haven’t made the Institute yet, and 
there hasn’t been a word said about father’s 
club. Of course, father and Uncle Bill told me 
last year to wait, and I’ve turned down a couple 
of second-raters, but it puzzles me. I don’t like 
it.” 

With what seemed almost studied cruelty she 
again flung Clark’s name at him. “I was told 
that Arthur will make an early fifteen; of course 
he couldn’t take it now because of football.” 
Harry looked quickly at her, but there was no 
trace of sharpness in the deep brown eyes that 
met his own. 

“Yes, I know it,” he answered. 

Then their talk turned to other subjects. Her 
father’s ill health worried her. Ever since her 
mother’s death, a few years before, Ellen had 
assumed charge of the household, and she had 


60 


HIGH HURDLES 


learned that economy was necessary if the old 
brick house in which she had been born, as well 
as her father before her, was to be maintained. 
John Davenport came of an ancient and hon¬ 
ored Boston family. On his graduation from 
Harvard a voyage, prompted by his never 
robust health, in a sailing ship to Java and 
Australia, had crystallized his desire to devote 
his life to the natural sciences. On his return, 
his father, a clergyman, had succeeded in 
financing the young man through the post¬ 
graduate years in the university, which made 
a doctor’s degree possible. Since that day he 
had taught in Harvard. From his father had 
come the house in which he lived and which 
represented the only estate he could pass on at 
his death to his son and daughter. 

Harry got up to go. “Thank you for what 
you said this afternoon, Ellen,” he said. “I 
wouldn’t let any one else say to me some of the 
things you have said, but I like it when you do 
it. Perhaps it’s because it makes me think you 
care a little for me.” 

He held her hand, and she did not take it 
from him. “I do care, Harry,” she said; “not 
so much as you would have me, but enough to 


HIGH HURDLES 


61 


make me want you to be big and fine and play 
your part. Sometimes I think you only see the 
things at hand, the easy conquests and the 
pleasures of easy living. It’s the far horizon 
you must see, Harry; if you will see that, I think 
you will win the near-by things that will help 
you on your way.” 


Ill 


» 


In the car to Cambridge, Harry found a seat 
beside Herrick. As though preparing to dis¬ 
close a confidence, Herrick turned his face 
toward Harry’s ear and lowered his voice: “Do 
you know, Gray, I’ve an ambition: I want to 
graduate with honors.” 

For a fleeting second Harry stared at him, 
wondering if this were not some jest that 
Herrick was trying out on him. Then he 
laughed rather awkwardly. 

“I seem to be running into a lot of earnest 
workers lately. Personally, I hope to get 
through without killing myself, put in a couple 
of years in the law school, travel a bit, 
marry — ” He paused, for the word stopped 
his train of thought. 

They left the subway at the Square and 
walked briskly to the dormitory. 

“Here’s a mess,” was Clarence’s greeting as 
Harry opened the door. “The dean gave me a 
heart-to-heart to-day that’s of interest to you, 


HIGH HURDLES 63 

my lad.” He regarded Harry with quizzical 
interest. 

“What did he say?” 

“Said you and I were a pair of wasters and 
that if we didn’t become different from what we 
are something unpleasant would happen to us.” 

“Any particular criticisms?” asked Harry. 

“Rather! Commented on my liabilities about 
town here and intimated that I’d have more 
money if I played less at cards. That’s where 
you came in. Said you were a bad influence, 
that your allowance was too big, that you had no 
ambition and your head was turned. Told me 
to tell you that and to consider yourself warned, 
whatever he meant by that.” 

Harry flushed hotly. “Anything else?” 

Clarence switched on the light in his bedroom 
and disappeared behind the door. “No, I guess 
that’s enough. Let’s go and see a show to-night 
and forget our worries.” 

The morning of the Yale game came bright 
and clear. Harry had two Saturday morning 
recitations, but he decided to cut them, although 
the marks that he had been receiving during the 
past months were far below the “gentleman’s 
average” of which he so often boasted, and a 


64 


HIGH HURDLES 


little more backsliding would see him on pro¬ 
bation, the final chance given to a delinquent 
student — the last phase between reinstate¬ 
ment and expulsion. 

Ellen had invited him to lunch. Half an 
hour before the set time he rang her doorbell. 
They chatted happily without reference to past 
happenings, and he caught something of her 
ingenuous excitement over the afternoon’s 
contest. He had engaged an automobile to 
take them out to the field, and as he tucked her 
in the deep seat of the tonneau her glowing 
cheeks seemed to reflect the crimson of the 
great bunch of roses he had brought her. 

They found their seats in the north end of the 
stadium just inside the temporary wooden stand 
and watched the stream of men and women 
flood into the vast inclosure through innumer¬ 
able entrances and scatter out along the 
terraced seats. 

A roar of cheers brought them to their feet. 
From under a low opening, in the far end, a 
flock of tan-and-blue-clad men rushed out into 
the arena. Now they separated, and eleven 
men from their number charged down the green 
turf in rapid formations. A louder burst of 


HIGH HURDLES 


65 


cheers echoed back from side to side as the 
Harvard squad surged from the opening. 
Before the cheering section frenzied men swung 
their arms and from deep throats rose the slow 
battle cry of Harvard: “Harvard, Harvard, 
Harvard.” 

A sudden silence ..... Yale had won the 
toss. Again a roar of voices shattered the 
stillness. Again silence. Scattered about the 
field, the players seemed dwarfed and insig¬ 
nificant. Then came the kick-off; smoothly 
the ball soared in a long curve. The game had 
begun. 

Close by his side Harry felt Ellen tremble 
with excitement. With a swift onslaught 
Harvard carried the ball to Yale’s ten-yard line. 
Like a wall, the slim line of blue held. Fourth 
down. Something had happened, for out of a 
broken play rolled the ball. A blue figure 
seized it; zigzagged down the field, dodged 
twice; there was a streak of crimson, and the 
two players were on the ground. With an 
attack that seemed irresistible, the Yale team 
tore through the Harvard line. From the Yale 
side a frenzy of tumult greeted every gain. 
The five-yard line was reached. The red line 


66 


HIGH HURDLES 


held. Again came the blue charge. Like a 
spike, the Yale formation drove through. A 
touchdown! The cheers seemed interminable. 
From the field the ball soared toward the goal 
posts and struck the horizontal bar. No goal. 

The game now settled into an equal contest. 
Up and down the field the teams fought their 
way into the last quarter. Again the line of 
battle set toward the Yale goal. Then came 
a storm of cheers and a billowing of crimson 
flags in the darkening amphitheater. Harvard 
had scored. There was a silence. Then came 
another burst of cheers. Harvard had kicked 
the goal. The score was 6 to 5. 

Like greyhounds unleashed, two substitutes 
dashed out from the Harvard benches. Ellen 
gripped Harry’s arm. “It’s Arthur!” She 
was almost crying with excitement. “They’ve 
put him in. He has his chance!” 

At last the final period, when a few brief 
minutes seemed prolonged into hours and each 
minute might end the play. With grim 
tenacity the crimson team pushed slowly down 
the field. Again a fumble. Again a Yale 
player snatched the bouncing ball. The field 
was clear. A wild roar of encouragement burst 


HIGH HURDLES 


67 


from the Yale side. On he sped. Slowly gain¬ 
ing, a Harvard end raced behind him. They 
closed. With a tigerish dive Clark tackled, 
and the two rolled on the sod. Facing almost 
certain defeat, Harvard had held her victory. 
The whistle of the referee shrilled. The game 
was over. 

As they moved out of the stadium, helpless 
in the stream of humanity, there was a sudden 
stop, and Ellen and Harry were shoved 
violently back to create a passage. Half car¬ 
ried, half supported, the Harvard squad came 
down the narrow lane. Grimed and battered 
with the scars of recent battle, they passed amid 
wild cheering. Harry saw Clark among the 
foremost. There was a deep gash in his fore¬ 
head, and the blood and sweat and dirt of the 
field almost disguised him. 

The crowd closed in and moved slowly on 
past the locker building. Here some thousands 
waited to cheer the team, and one by one their 
names were roared in throaty chorus. Pain¬ 
fully Harry listened, then it came: “Rah, rah, 
rah, Clark, Clark, Clark!” 

It was Harvard’s day, and Clark had saved it. 

Ellen went back to Boston with Mrs. Copley. 


68 


HIGH HURDLES 


Clarence was dining somewhere in town. For 
one of the few times in Harry’s life a sense of 
loneliness oppressed him. He walked up to the 
Square and ate a solitary lunch. As he swung 
around through Mount Auburn Street on his 
way back bursts of riotous laughter and the 
tumult of lifted voices came out through the 
opened windows of the clubhouses. Vaguely 
this club life which he so complacently expected 
as his rightful inheritance seemed remote and 
elusive. He was farther from its realization 
to-night than ever. He had pulled out of the 
great surging stream of undergraduate life into 
a quiet backwater and expected that he would 
be found there and carried out triumphant on 
the tide. 

But the current was sweeping by him and 
from his place he saw others borne along on the 
stream. He thought of it with sudden bitter¬ 
ness. From early boyhood he had considered 
his life as a settled sequence of events; it was 
his part only to accept them as they came. 
Vaguely he wondered if the present was a 
prophecy of the future. A lump filled his 
throat. For a brief moment he longed for 
sympathy, for the understanding and partisan 


HIGH HURDLES 69 

love of a mother, such as he had known when 
he was a little boy. 

There was an envelope beneath the door — a 
telegram. He tore it open and read the brief 
message. It was from his father. It read: 
“I would like to have you come home for a day 
as soon as possible Sunday preferably.” He 
reread the typewritten words. This was the 
second time in his life that his father had wired 
him. He remembered well the first telegram, 
for it had called him to his mother’s bedside. 

Harry caught the early subway to Boston 
and, almost hidden in his coonskin coat, sank 
down in a corner of the ill-ventilated car. At 
South Station he breakfasted on a cup of coffee 
and some rolls. It was still dark when the 
dingy train pulled out of the station, and half an 
hour later he watched the day come, cold and 
cheerless in a leaden sky. 

New Bedford was deserted; fog filled the 
streets. The old Gray mansion was a short 
fifteen minutes’ walk from the station, and as 
Harry climbed the low hill through the quiet 
old-fashioned streets the fog began to break 
and disappear before a rising breeze from the 
sea. He turned in from the street between two 


70 


HIGH HURDLES 


granite gateposts. It was an old residence, 
built by his grandfather, a massive, square pile 
of granite well back from the street. 

Harry pulled 1 the silvered knob at the side of 
the wide mahogany panel. That door was a 
symbol of his grandfather; Vermont granite and 
Santo Domingo mahogany were the materials 
of which he built his house. The mahogany 
had been brought to New Bedford in one of his 
own ships. 

Old Jenny opened the door. Cutting short 
her exuberant Irish welcome, he asked for his 
father and found that he had been ill, but was 
again downstairs. A wood fire was burning in 
his father’s study. 

Harry moved about the room. The books, 
the fine old furniture, the broad desk with the 
heavy silver fittings, the pictures, even the deep 
rug beneath his feet, all conspired to carry him 
back into childhood. 

Although he had not heard a step, he was 
suddenly conscious that his father was standing 
in the doorway. Their greeting was formal, a 
filial kiss on his father’s cheek and the slight 
pressure of their clasped hands. 

Together they sat down on the divan. The 


HIGH HURDLES 


71 


light from the fire shone on the older man, and 
Harry felt, as he had always felt, an admiration 
tor the perfect grooming and aristocratic 
presence of this product of inheritance and 
environment. 

For an hour they talked casually of trivial 
things, and while Harry was conscious of 
reluctance on his own part to discuss the recent 
happenings in his life in Cambridge, he soon 
began to feel a similar reluctance on the part 
of his father to speak of something which 
evidently disturbed him. Their conversation 
ebbed. The older man rose stiffly from his seat 
and paced slowly back and forth before the fire, 
his head sunk slightly forward on his stooped 
shoulders. His step was feeble and his left 
hand trembled continuously. He faced his son. 

“I have two unpleasant things to tell you. 
My doctor tells me that I am on my last course; 
he won’t say just when; it may be a few years 
— or weeks.” 

An emotion that was new to Harry, and for 
the moment overpowering, seized him: a quick 
welling up of sympathy. Instinctively he stood 
up and put his hand on the thin shoulders. 
“Why, father, it can’t be.” 


72 


HIGH HURDLES 


“Sit down. There is another thing. You 
have been brought up to expect a continuance 
of the fortune which has been ours. If I am 
given time, yoii will inherit enough to lead the 
life which I have hoped for you: enough to 
travel, to marry, to keep this place which was 
your father’s and your grandfather’s. But if I 
am called quickly I cannot say what may be left 
to you. Perhaps I have not followed enough 
the guidance of others. I have followed my 
own wishes. I did not want Holman to disturb 
investments that for years have maintained us.” 

They were silent. The ship’s clock on the 
mantel struck six bells in slow, sweet couplets. 

“Perhaps,” the older man continued, “all 
that I am saying may be an unnecessary alarm. 
I wanted to talk with you, however; if anything 
should happen to me before — ” He hesitated, 
then continued: “You see, the doctor isn’t 
altogether encouraging, and it has depressed 
me. All I want to tell you is to be ready to rely 
on yourself if need be. Don’t be disturbed 
by my talk, Harry; I’m good for a few years 
more, and business conditions won’t continue 
this way indefinitely.” 

They dined together in the big dining room, 


HIGH HURDLES 73 

and afterward smoked and talked in opposite 
corners of the divan in the study. 

At four Harry rose to go. “I must be back 
to-night,” he explained; “early lecture to¬ 
morrow, you know. Rotten train service 
Sunday.”. . . 

Early winter had flung a blanket of snow 
over the gray roofs of Cambridge. It was two 
weeks since Harry’s trip home. He had written 
his father once, and had received in reply a few 
feebly scrawled lines on a sheet of stiff white 
paper with his father’s initials in small square 
black letters in the upper corner. Phelps Gray 
was better, the letter said. Harry accepted the 
assurance and swept the entire matter from his 
mind. Clarence, thoroughly frightened by the 
dean’s warning, was devoting himself to his 
studies, and Harry for a few days caught a little 
of the spirit of his room-mate’s activity. 

He had seen Ellen several times, and although 
she seemed each time more radiant, Harry felt 
on his own part a sense of estrangement that 
sent him back to Cambridge to plunge more 
completely into the activities of the small group 
with which he was becoming more and more 
closely identified. His evenings invariably 


74 


HIGH HURDLES 


lasted into the early morning, for there were 
dinners and dances in Boston, and on other 
evenings there was always a card game in Her¬ 
rick’s or some other room, at which he consist¬ 
ently piled up an increased deficit. 

Morning after morning he squelched the 
alarm clock at his bedside and decided to cut 
his first lecture. Once, after a late dance, he 
went to a nine o’clock with his overcoat con¬ 
cealing the evening clothes beneath. The mid¬ 
year examinations were still far ahead. 
Vaguely he procrastinated; a week or two 
before the final crisis he would “bone up” and 
get through somehow or other. 

Herrick dropped in one afternoon and 
sprawled on the window seat. He had much 
to say about his system of study: three hours a 
day, seven days a week. Harry mentally 
magnified Herrick’s ability and his power of 
concentration to appease his own faintly 
twinging conscience. He was not like Herrick 
— that was the excuse he made to himself. 

Together they went to town in Herrick’s car 
to dine and go to a theater. It was the inev¬ 
itable musical show, a succession of songs and 
choruses through which flitted the leading 



IF I AM CALLED QUICKLY I CANNOT SAY WHAT MAY BE LEFT TO YOU 





























































. 

. 



























































HIGH HURDLES 75 

comedian in varied costumes in character with 
the lightning changes of the chorus. 

“Notice that blonde, second from the right,” 
Herrick whispered audibly in Harry’s ear. 
“Look, she sees me! I know her!” 

A vivacious girl with a heavy wig above a 
childish face winked appreciably at Herrick’s 
violent signaling. 

“Let’s meet ’em for supper,” Herrick pro¬ 
posed. “She has a friend, Grace, that other 
blonde next to the old dodo in the center, who’ll 
come with her. We’ll get a stall up at 
Hindman’s.” 

“Oh, let’s go off and have supper by our¬ 
selves,” Harry answered. He was not a prude, 
but the tawdriness of it repelled him. 

Herrick laughed good-humoredly. “All 
right,” he consented. “All right, Sir Galahad.” 

Harry flushed. “I just don’t like that sort 
of stuff. That’s all. And I don’t see how a 
fellow can get much amusement trailing around 
with a bunch of painted women if he really cares 
for any girls of his own kind.” 

They left the theater and separated from the 
crowd outpouring from the entrance. It was 
cold and a fine snow fell from an almost cloud- 


76 


HIGH HURDLES 


less sky in which the moon appeared and 
disappeared as though shrouded by a white veil 
of varying density. 

Hindman’s was warm, and a three-piece 
orchestra rioted through a selection of familiar, 
frothy airs. They found a stall in a corner. 
Herrick was in jovial mood, and produced a 
flask from his pocket the contents of which he 
extolled highly. Harry, aided by two highballs, 
gradually responded to his vivacity. 

Herrick soon found himself a partner, and in 
languorous embrace swayed about the floor. It 
was the girl in the show, Harry noticed. 
Herrick returned, mopping his hot face with his 
handkerchief. “Fine little dancer,” he com¬ 
mented. “Well, let’s go. Drinks all gone and 
you won’t dance, so that’s that.” 

They paid their check and moved down the 
room. From a crowded stall voices called to 
Herrick. “Got to tell ’em good-night,” he 
explained. “Come along!” Hooking Harry 
by the elbow, he led him to the table and 
introduced him to the party. For a few 
minutes they stood talking. 

“Good-bye, Harry,” called one of the girls. 

As they moved on, Harry noticed two men 


HIGH HURDLES 


77 


who had just arrived and were sitting down at 
a table. One of them was Clark. He stared, 
first at Harry, then at the noisy party in the 
stall. “Good-bye, Harry,” the girl called again, 
waving a thin, powdered arm. 

Outside, the night struck them with a sudden 
and penetrating coldness; the street was silent 
and deserted. Harry breathed deeply, filling 
his lungs with the clean air. 

“You and I were made different,” he com¬ 
mented to Herrick. “All that jazzy music and 
stuffy air full of food smells and cheap per¬ 
fumery sort of annoys me. And what voices 
most of that sort of women have, the kind you 
see in the cabaret joints.” 

Herrick chuckled. “Did you see your friend 
Clark there? Lord, but he slung you a nasty 
look. What’s the trouble between you two? 
Seems to me he’s a nice enough chap, and if he 
keeps on at the rate he’s going he’ll be one of 
the big men in the class by the time he 
graduates. Don’t you like him?” 

“No!” Harry hesitated for a moment. “It’s 
a personal matter.” 

In silence they walked back to the garage 
where Herrick had left his car. The incidents 


78 


HIGH HURDLES 


of the evening, ordinary as they were, had 
implanted in his mind a growing realization that 
a set of values existed which he must recognize. 
The horizon had broadened perceptibly. 

The holidays came and were gone in a rush 
of activity. On the day of his return to college 
Harry called on Ellen. There was no mention 
of Clark in their conversation, but in an 
uncanny way he felt Clark’s presence, as though 
he were actually sitting beside them. 

Ellen was more quiet than usual. With the 
New Year she had begun a course of study to 
fit herself for secretarial work, she told him. 
She dismissed the subject of her work lightly, 
but Harry realized that necessity prompted her 
action. 

He left the house with a feeling that the gap 
between them had widened. He also realized 
that he loved her more deeply than he had ever 
realized. 

Now the mid-year examinations were at hand. 
With his old procrastination, Harry had delayed 
to buckle down to work until the last minute. 
Hje turned to his studies with the frenzy of des¬ 
peration. 

Jack Dixon dropped into the room one 


HIGH HURDLES 


79 


evening and found Harry hard at it. “Con¬ 
gratulations/ 1 ’ he said, with evident sincerity. 
“How they coming?” 

“Rotten!” Harry tipped back in his chair. 
“I didn’t realize how much I’ve missed until I 
started to make it up.” 

“I’m interested,” Dixon said, “because I 
want to see you get out for the crew this spring. 
You’ve got just the build for an oarsman. I 
believe you’d like it.” 

Harry colored slightly. “I’ve a job on my 
hands now,” he said, “that I must get out of the 
way first. If I’m in good standing after the 
mid-year, I’d like to talk more about it.” 

When he thought over the conversation a 
little later he dimly realized that Dixon was 
trying to help him; was holding out a chance by 
which Harry might redeem his failure at foot¬ 
ball. The thought mortified him. He was 
not willing to accept help from any one. 

The nightmare of the examinations was 
finally over. Harry had taken five in as many 
days and for the two weeks previous he had 
crammed day and night for the ordeal. 

A few days later he found a postal from the 
dean in his mail box. The cold printed form 


80 


HIGH HURDLES 


requested him to be at the dean’s office the 
morning following at eleven o’clock. Harry 
had heard from his examinations and his worst 
fears were realized: D in two subjects, C in 
one, failure in two. 

There were half a dozen undergraduates sit¬ 
ting uneasily on the long benches in the outer 
office. The hands of the clock touched eleven, 
and a few minutes later the door behind the rail¬ 
ing opened and an upper classman emerged 
smiling. His good humor seemed to augur well, 
and when the clerk beckoned Harry went into 
the room in a faint glow of optimism. 

“Good-morning, Mr. Gray. Please sit down.” 

Harry sat stiffly in the chair, and regarded the 
man across the desk from him. Through the tall 
windows the sunshine flooded the big room and 
gleamed on the polished desk top. 

The dean folded his hands on the edge of the 
desk while he studied a slip of paper before him. 

“Mr. Gray,” he began, “I am afraid this can¬ 
not be a pleasant occasion. I have been follow¬ 
ing you with particular attention for some time. 
It seems to me desirable that you withdraw from 
the university.” 

For a minute Harry sat stupefied. Probation 


HIGH HURDLES 81 

he expected. But expulsion; that was incon¬ 
ceivable! 

As though he had read Harry’s thoughts, the 
other continued: “Please do not think, Mr. Gray, 
that you are being judged entirely on your 
examinations. In those you did fail, decisively. 
But there are other things that I am considering. 
Your attendance through the year has been very 
irregular. You have failed completely to apply 
yourself to your studies. Furthermore, and I 
may say particularly, I do not think your habits 
are a desirable influence. You need not require 
me to specify the moral effect on yourself and 
others of intemperance, gambling, and other 
dissipation.” 

Harry’s eyes met the eyes of the dean in a 
blank gaze. “You mean,” he asked, amazement 
in each slowly spoken word, “that I am expelled 
from Harvard?” 

“Let us not call it ‘expelled,’ Mr. Gray. I 
warned you, some months ago, through your 
room-mate. You did not heed my warnings. 
Harvard, let us put it, has demoralized you. For 
your own good, I believe it necessary for you to 
meet life on some other basis. I am willing to 
give you the opportunity to withdraw from the 


82 


HIGH HURDLES 


university. A year from now, perhaps, if you 
prove yourself worthy, your return might be dis¬ 
cussed. The university must be considered. You 
have had the misfortune of too much money. 
You have measured life so far by the yardstick 
of dollars. That is wrong. That you are wrong 
is doubtless not your fault, but it is not fair that 
because you have money you should idle away 
four years and by so doing perhaps keep a better 
man out of here.” 

Harry got up stiffly. “Do you realize what 
this means to me; to my father?” he said. “You 
said something about ‘other dissipation.’ What 
did you mean by that?” 

“I am informed that you have certain un¬ 
desirable acquaintances. It is not because of 
that, however, that I am doing this. That is 
only one of many things that contribute to my 
decision.” 

Harry flushed hotly. Here, he felt certain, 
was proof of Clark’s enmity. From him alone 
must have come the malicious information. For 
a fleeting second he felt impelled to name his 
informant and brand the lie. Then he drew 
himself stiffly to his full height, and spoke 
quietly: “Yes. I was seen speaking with two 


HIGH HURDLES 83 

chorus girl in a cabaret. You were so far cor¬ 
rectly informed.” 

The dean left his chair and put a friendly 
hand on Harry’s shoulder. As though pleading 
a case, he repeated his arguments. 

“Perhaps I’m wrong,” Harry finally retorted. 
“You are sending me away because I am living 
my own life as I see it. I can’t be some one else, 
something that is not myself.” . . . 

From the steps of University Hall, Harry sur¬ 
veyed the Yard. Against the sky the graceful 
gray branches of the elms wove delicate lacery; 
like the personification of traditions, the ancient 
brick dormitories looked out across the center of 
Harvard life and activity. For the first time a 
wave of real sentiment swept through him; he 
realized that he had grown to care for this 
ancient institution as a man grows unconsciously 
to care for a friend. The appalling climax of the 
past few minutes awoke him to bitter realization. 

Walking back to his room, his mind began to 
adjust itself. Perhaps this might not be final, 
after all. Uncle Bill Holman, his father’s friend, 
was a man of prominence and a distinguished 
Harvard graduate. His influence might stay the 
sentence. Suddenly he thought of Ellen. What 


84 


HIGH HURDLES 


would she say? Was this the end of his romance 
as well as his college career? He decided not to 
go to his room, but to go directly to town and 
find Holman at his office. Then he would see 
Ellen. 

For a few minutes that seemed interminable 
Harry waited in the outer office. At last 
a boy ushered him down a long corridor and 
through a leather-covered door. 

Uncle Bill Holman was writing at a broad 
table that faced his desk. He was a big man 
with a shock of iron-gray hair that covered his 
head like an unkempt wig. His heavy jaw moved 
slowly as he wrote, chewing the words traced by 
his pen. He was smooth-shaven, but the heavy 
bristling eyebrows gave a hairy appearance to 
his face. 

“Hello, Harry.” He laid down the pen and 
reached a big hand across the table. “I’ve been 
wanting to talk to you. Glad you came in.” 

They shook hands, and Harry drew a chair 
up to the table. “Uncle Bill,” he began, “Fm in 
trouble. I want your advice, your help.” 

“I’m sorry. Tell me about it.” 

“Well, I’ve been fired!” 

Holman’s eyes closed slightly, but there was 


HIGH HURDLES 85 

no movement of the massive features to indicate 
the reaction caused by Harry’s words. 

“I want to stay, to get my degree. Can you 
help me?” 

“Tell me the whole thing, Harry. Start at 
the beginning.” 

Painfully Harry recounted his talk with the 
dean, and on each of the charges against his 
deportment endeavored to give a fair answer 
without sparing himself. 

“How much do you owe?” 

“About a thousand dollars,” Harry answered, 
“perhaps more; I don’t know exactly.” 

“How are you going to square up these 
debts?” 

“Why—” Harry glanced in surprise at the 
stern but kindly face. “Why,” he repeated, “I’ll 
get father to settle them up for me. Meant to 
ask him at Christmas but he wasn’t well and I 
put it off.” 

There was silence for a full minute. Then 
Holman began to speak in a slow, resonant 
voice: 

“What I say may seem harsh, but I shall only 
repeat your own admissions. You entered with 
everything a boy could desire. Every oppor- 


86 


HIGH HURDLES 


tunity opened to you. You have failed. I don’t 
believe you are a weakling at heart, but you have 
played the weakling. For you college has been 
only a pleasant place for recreation. You have 
accomplished nothing. You have given nothing 
of yourself to Harvard; you have taken nothing 
from her. I shall not intercede for you.” 

Harry got to his feet. “I came here, hoping 
you would help me,” he said stiffly. “If you do 
not care to do that, I may as well leave.” 

“Sit down. You come here after having made 
an ass of yourself and then resent the advice you 
ask me to give you. You have had some plain 
truths told you to-day. I am going to tell you 
two other things you may not know. Your father 
is a dying man.” 

“He told me that.” 

“And when he dies,” Holman continued, “the 
Gray estate that has been your chief undoing 
will be a memory.” 

“You mean —” 

“Your father chose to make certain invest¬ 
ments. Six months ago he brought the wreckage 
to me. When the estate is settled I doubt if 
there will be assets sufficient even to meet his 
liabilities.” 


HIGH HURDLES 87 

He leaned back in his chair and watched 
Harry's face. 

“Then I am — then I am a pauper?" 

Holman suddenly reached forward and struck 
the table with his clenched fist. “No, by God, 
no! Not at your age, with a sound body and an 
education behind you! Not if there is in you a 
single spark of grit and fight and determination. 
You’ve been a quitter long enough. Go out and 
redeem yourself." 

“You call me a quitter!" Harry was on his 
feet. “If you are father’s friend, you shan’t do 
that. A man called me that name once and I 
took it. I’ll never take it again!" Harry’s voice 
rose higher in his excitement. “It’s unfair, I tell 
you. It was a dirty deal to fire me. And you 
side with them against me! You and father have 
always told me I had every chance in the world. 
Don’t you see that I’ve been handicapped all my 
life? I’ve been taught to believe that whatever 
I wanted I was entitled to have. And now — 
now, when I see that it’s all false and the bottom 
has dropped out — you refuse to help me." 

He put on his hat and walked to the door. 

“I came here for advice and help. I don’t 
want your advice and I won’t have your help!" 


88 


HIGH HURDLES 


The door swung open before his vicious push 
and closed silently behind him. 

Holman leaned over the table and thrummed 
the surface with his heavy fingers. “I was hard 
on him,” he said to himself; “but he needs to 
be pounded into sense. It was a good sign, the 
way he came back at me. If he will only come 
back at life that way! That’s the salvation.” 

Out in the street Harry was striding toward 
the Common. The cold, bracing air and the open 
sky refreshed him, but the heat of his indigna¬ 
tion grew as he contemplated his grievances. 

Gradually the import of Holman’s information 
regarding his father’s finances began to dawn 
upon him. His whole life had become suddenly 
complex beyond his ability to conceive. 

He rang the Davenports’ doorbell and marked 
time with nervous feet on the vestibule thresh¬ 
old. Miss Davenport was out, the maid informed 
him. She was having luncheon with Priscilla 
Dale. He read his watch; it was almost two. 
Halfway down the block he slowed his pace at 
the realization that he had not thought out what 
he would say to Ellen. Well, he would tell her 
that he was expelled; he would not spare himself. 
He would tell her of his resolve to leave Cam- 


HIGH HURDLES 89 

bridge immediately. He did not know where he 
was going. 

The Dales occupied a large modern house on 
Commonwealth Avenue. It had a gray limestone 
front of Georgian architecture; within it was a 
rich conglomerate of a dozen periods. Priscilla 
Dale was an attractive, unaffected girl; her 
father Harry despised, chiefly because he had 
made his own fortune, but also because he ex¬ 
pended it with a more lavish than skillful hand. 

Impatiently Harry waited in the elaborate 
reception room. 

“Why, Harry, how odd of you to follow me 
here. Is anything the matter?” Ellen had come 
down the stairs without his hearing her, and 
they stood facing each other before the carved 
stone fireplace. 

He told her briefly what had occurred and 
emphasized with bitterness his uncle’s words. 

She laid her hand on his arm in a spontaneous 
flash of sympathy and as instantly withdrew it. 
“Let me go back and say good-bye to Priscilla. 
Then you may walk home with me.” 

Ellen came down again ten minutes later and 
Harry helped her into her coat. Even that slight 
contact thrilled him — the warm shoulder be- 


90 


HIGH HURDLES 


neath the sheer blouse that his hand touched as 
he adjusted her collar. His spirits rose. He felt 
himself on the eve of great adventure. He was 
unappreciated; he would go forth into the world 
and come back to her victorious, crowned with 
the laurels of success. In a flashing thought he 
pictured the surprise of his friends and their 
hurried assurances that they had always believed 
in him. 

“What are you going to do?” she asked. His 
swinging hand touched hers and he yearned to 
seize it. 

“The world is before me,” he replied grandly, 
still swayed by the heroics of his imagination. 
“I am poor, Ellen. I once asked you to share 
the wealth that I thought I had. It’s gone. I am 
going to prove to you that I can succeed. I shall 
bring a new fortune back and lay it at your 
feet.” 

She gave him a quick sidelong glance. “You 
mustn’t say that you will do this because of me, 
Harry. I’ve told you that I have no thought of 
marriage; that I don’t love you enough to marry 
you.” 

“Clark is in love with you,” he broke in. 
“He’s a rotter —” 


HIGH HURDLES 


91 


“You mustn’t say that.” Ellen’s voice became 
cold and even. “Arthur Clark is a real man; he 
has everything against him, and he has done 
wonders.” 

“Has he asked you to marry him?” 

Ellen’s cheeks flamed. “What if he has?” she 
retorted. “I don’t see why you should take it 
upon yourself to criticize him.” 

“I am going to marry you.” 

She laughed nervously. “I am going to be a 
private secretary to some one and support my¬ 
self and my father. No, you are not going to 
marry me.” 

They were at the brick walk that led up to 
her doorway. 

“Ellen, I am going to marry you!” he 
repeated. “I don’t care what you say now. I 
shall prove myself. Whether or not you want 
me to do it, I shall have but one aim. I am 
coming back to claim you. I know that I have 
failed; I am starting all over again, and it’s all 
new to me. But with you to think about and 
work for I can’t help but succeed.” 

He took her small gloved hand. “Good-bye, 
Ellen, I love you.” 

“Good-bye, Harry. God bless you!” 


IV 


A week had gone by since Harry had stood on 
the steps of University Hall and faced the reality 
of his expulsion. It had at first surprised and 
later offended him that so little interest was 
taken in his predicament or his future. Stuy- 
vesant Baring, to be sure, had spent an evening 
with him and had been helpful in his condolences 
and sympathetically indignant at the overbear¬ 
ing attitude of the dean. Also, he had seen Her¬ 
rick, but that urbane gentleman had dismissed 
him with a triviality. 

“Well, Harry, when you make your million, 
wherever you’re going, don’t forget your old 
friend,” he said. Then, a little more seriously: 
“I’m after that scholarship honor, old top, and 
I believe I’ll get it.” 

But Harry met Felix Chapman one day and 
w*as a little embarrassed at his cordiality. In 
some way it was so much more genuine than the 
utterances of his intimates. 

Fortunately, Baring decided to give up his 
single room and join forces with Clarence, a 


HIGH HURDLES 


93 


situation that relieved Harry of his half interest 
in the Randolph suite and also gave him a little 
ready cash, for Baring bought most of the furni¬ 
ture, and Max, the second-hand poco, relieved 
him of the rest for a sum which exactly covered 
a farewell dinner with Clarence at the Touraine. 

But the two days that he spent at New Bed¬ 
ford were the hardest. At first Phelps Gray was 
indignant. He rose abruptly from the divan 
where they were sitting before the library fire, 
and paced almost briskly several times up and 
down the room. “I shall see the dean myself,” 
he ejaculated. “I have friends among the over¬ 
seers. He shall hear of this. The expulsion of 
my son in this fashion is no light matter.” 

To his surprise, Harry found himself defend¬ 
ing the dean’s action. He would accept the situ¬ 
ation with dignity; he hoped that his father 
would respect his decision. Reluctantly his 
father assented. 

Harry picked up their talk again: “Perhaps it 
was a little stiff, coming as it did. But, father, 
let’s look the facts in the face. I’m out of Har¬ 
vard. The world is before me. I can’t come and 
live with you; I must begin to lay my founda¬ 
tion for my life.” 


94 


HIGH HURDLES 


The older man did not follow closely the 
boyish phrases, but he caught their purport. 
“That’s right, Harry, you can’t rust away down 
here yet. Some day the old place Will mean 
much to you. Now you must get your start. 
Have you given any thought to the matter?” 

“There are several things,” Harry replied. 
“There is the publishing business.” His father 
nodded grave approval. “If there is not an 
opening there, I may consider a good bond 
house. And if nothing comes of these things,” 
Harry continued, “I may go West. There should 
be a fine opportunity there for Eastern chaps.” 

“One of the New York State cities or Ohio 
somewhere? I hardly see the necessity.” 

“No, Chicago, or even farther. I mean the 
real West, the big new part of the nation.” 

“I doubt if success is any greater there than 
here.” 

“Perhaps. But, father, the point is, don’t 
worry about me. To-morrow morning I hope to 
find the sort of thing I want. I have several 
concerns in view. To-night I shall go over them 
in my mind.” 

“How are your finances?” 

“I could use some money,” Harry admitted, 


HIGH HURDLES 


95 


“just to tide me over. In a month or so I ought 
to be getting along very comfortably on my 
salary, although, of course, I can’t expect much.” 

He watched his father seat himself stiffly at 
the broad desk and pluck a pen from a little 
shot-filled holder. He wfrote slowly and then 
folded the oblong slip of blue paper. “I’m sorry, 
my boy, I can’t help you out more at this time. 
Certain unforeseen—” 

Harry interrupted him. He dreaded the 
knowledge that he knew must come some day. 
Preserving the fold in the check, he thrust it 
into his pocket without glancing at the numerals. 
“Thanks, father.” 

“If you need more — ” 

“I know, I’ll come to you.” 

Dinner over, Harry left almost immediately. 
In the hall he lingered for a few brief minutes 
while he put on his coat; there seemed so much 
that should be said, so little that he could say 
to the white-haired man beside him. All his 
young life this high, dark hall had been his play¬ 
ground. He recalled the deep, low closets under 
the stairs and the wonder with which he would 
pause and stare at the portraits of two Chinese 
merchants with whom his grandfather had done 


96 


HIGH HURDLES 


much business in the great hongs at Foochow. 
There was a hat rack of curiously carved teak, 
and in the far end under the broad landing a 
suit of Chinese armor with a grotesque mask 
that grinned horribly from beneath the lacquered 
helmet. With quick tenderness he kissed his 
father’s thin cheek and felt his slight fingers grip 
his own. Then the door closed behind him. . . . 

There was spring warmth in the sunshine as 
Harry walked across the Common. He had 
returned from New Bedford the previous eve¬ 
ning and taken a room at the Parker House. A 
good night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast had 
put him thoroughly to rights with the world; 
his confidence had risen in proportion, and 
already he began to plan the furnishings of the 
rooms he would take somewhere around Charles 
Street as soon as his work was definitely deter¬ 
mined. 

A middle-aged woman behind a small desk 
took his card. Harry mentioned the name of the 
editor. 

“Your business, please.” 

The interrogation for a moment almost con¬ 
fused him; it offended him. 

“A personal matter,” he replied carelessly, 


HIGH HURDLES 97 

and turned his back to examine the book illus¬ 
trations framed on the opposite wall. 

In a minute she returned. “Mr. Fielding says 
he does not recall you. He is very busy. Unless 
it is a matter of great importance —” 

Harry interrupted her with a gesture that 
spoke apology. “It is a matter of importance.” 

Again she disappeared and again he regarded 
the pictures. 

“Come this way, if you please.” The woman 
motioned with her pencil. 

Mr. Fielding was a man of sixty, with scant 
gray hair and gold-rimmed spectacles through 
which peered eyes of extraordinary penetra¬ 
tion. 

“You are Mr. Gray? What can I do for you?” 
He spoke with obvious impatience. 

“I have often heard Mr. Holman, my father’s 
friend, speak of you. I am a son of Phelps Gray 
of New Bedford.” 

“Yes, I know Mr. Holman.” 

“I am coming to you,” Harry continued, a 
trifle nettled by the evident impatience of Mr. 
Fielding, “to tell you that I am looking for a 
position. I should like to become associated with 
your company.” 


98 HIGH HURDLES 

The editor sat down and motioned Harry to a 
seat. 

“You say you want a position? What can you 
do? What has been your experience?” 

Harry recounted his brief history, placing 
considerable emphasis on his fondness for lit¬ 
erature and passing lightly over the mid-year 
catastrophe. 

“Were you on any of the college papers during 
your stay at Harvard?” 

Harry shook his head. 

“Of course, if a lad wants to follow the pub¬ 
lishing business there are many things that 
college can do for him,” Mr. Fielding continued, 
“as is the case in any activity he may choose. 
That is one function of a university — to pre¬ 
pare men not that they may start higher up, 
but that they may climb, once started, with more 
surety and celerity. Right now, however, I’m 
afraid I can’t do anything for you. I don’t see 
why you decided to try this sort of work,” he 
continued in a cold, even voice. “You haven’t 
had a business experience; you haven’t had any 
particular work at the university you could use. 
Why don’t you go to work for a newspaper, if 
you are interested in publishing?” 


HIGH HURDLES 


99 


The interview' was obviously at an end. 

“I’m sorry, but your suggestion of a news¬ 
paper doesn’t appeal to me,” Gray replied. 
“Thank you, however, Mr. Fielding. It has been 
a pleasure to meet you.” Gravely he shook 
hands and before he had faced the door the 
editor was immersed in the stack of papers on 
his desk. 

Harry walked slowly toward State Street. 
Somehow the immediate experience troubled 
him. As in college, so in this greater university 
of the world, his fellows failed to judge him by 
his self-appraisal. 

But in the loW-ceilinged offices of the bond 
house his card brought the gratifying response 
of an immediate invitation to enter one of the 
inner offices. A tall, well-built man of forty-five 
greeted him. Harry surveyed him with approval; 
the dark tweed suit, the white starched linen, 
and a single pearl in the deep-green four-in-hand 
were hall-marks of good taste. 

“So you want a job?” the financier remarked. 
“Well, I’m sorry, but you’ve come at a rather 
bad time. I’d like to do something for you, but 
it’s impossible now — quite impossible.” 

“I hardly expected to be turned down without 


> 

» > 
3 ) 



100 


HIGH HURDLES 


consideration. I believe I have certain qualifi¬ 
cations that—” 

“Doubtless you have, but the net of it is we’re 
not taking on any one.” 

The member of the State Street bond house 
twisted the slender gold chain across his chest 
with shapely but strong fingers. 

“I should be willing to take a nominal salary 
at the start,” Harry continued. 

The other smiled grimly: “Doubtless you 
would. You’re not different from any other lad 
that’s just green out of college. It’s a big thing 
to get a chance at any salary. But you certainly 
don’t expect concerns to make places for college 
boys over the heads of their employees?” 

“I didn’t say what I expected, but I did expect 
that there was a real place for a gentleman in a 
business of this sort.” 

The older man laughed. “I like your self- 
assurance, Mr. Gray; properly directed, it will 
carry you a long way, but right now and here 
I’m afraid it won’t help you.” 

They shook hands, and Harry found his way 
out of the office. His next two calls increased 
his discomfiture. At one place a curt refusal 
abruptly ended the interview, and at the other 


HIGH HURDLES 


101 


seven dollars a week and the title of errand boy 
had been suggested. 

The following morning he resumed his search 
of a job. The outcome was the same, and the 
late afternoon found him face to face with a 
sharp realization of his inadequacy. 

The sun had sunk behind the roofs of Boyl- 
ston Street, and the fine, clear yellow twilight 
filled the air. Already the puddles were sharp¬ 
ening with shell ice and the sidewalk rang 
sharply under his step. For a half hour Harry 
wandered in front of the shop windows, then he 
turned into one of the paths in the Common. 
Among the many dark figures walking hurriedly 
here and there, his eye suddenly spied one that 
seemed familiar. He quickened his step. It was 
Ellen. In a few minutes he was beside her. 

At her name, Ellen turned. Her cheeks were 
red in the pinch of the sharp north wind, and 
her eyes were deep and misty. She carried a 
green baize bag that bulged with books. “Why, 
Harry, I hardly expected to see you so soon.” 
She indicated the bag. “I am late to-night. I 
began my new work Monday. I am private sec¬ 
retary to Mr. Sears Reading of the Charitable 
Foundation.” 


102 


HIGH HURDLES 


“You are working?” he stammered. 

“Indeed I am. And it’s really splendid fun. 
Incidentally, even my small addition to the 
family purse is quite helpful.” 

“I’m looking for a job.” 

She gave him a fleeting glance — noticed that 
he looked pale and tired. 

“I haven’t had much success yet,” Harry con¬ 
tinued. “I used to think that all I had to do was 
to walk out and ask for one, but it’s different 
now.” 

“Perhaps it’s not a bad thing for you, Harry, 
that you should find out things as they are.” 

They crossed the broad path of Arlington 
Street and turned up Commonwealth Avenue. 
“Someway, I don’t like to think of you working,” 
he said. 

“Perhaps it’s because, deep in your heart, you 
consider work menial. I think the humblest 
work is sometimes the loftiest. I respect a man 
who can take the work that is given to him and 
build with it.” 

“You respect Clark because he is working his 
way through Harvard?” 

She flashed a look of resentment at him. “I 
do respect Mr. Clark as I never have been able 


HIGH HURDLES 


103 


to respect you, although there was a time when 
I wanted to. I said it was a good thing you were 
finding out things as they are; I might say it 
would be a good thing if you could find out your¬ 
self as you are.” 

Harry took her hands: “Ellen, I will do any¬ 
thing for you; anything you ask.” 

“I don’t want you to be a man because of me, 
or because of any one else. Be a man for your¬ 
self, Harry. And, quite frankly, I wish you 
would stop behaving in this way toward me. It 
annoys me.” She spoke sharply. 

He wanted to explain. Then he realized that 
words would only involve him deeper. “The next 
time you hear from me it will be by letter,” he 
said coldly. “I am leaving Boston.” He stood 
with his hat in his hand at her street corner, and 
Ellen could not help admiring his fine head and 
the clear, wide-set eyes beneath the bold fore¬ 
head. But she spoke almost indifferently: 
“Good-bye and good luck.” 

Without looking back, Harry walked down 
the street. He had a vague premonition that 
much water would pass over the mill wheel 
before they met again. And she had given him 
something to think about. After all, perhaps he 


104 


HIGH HURDLES 


did expect too much of the world. “But if I am 
as good as I think I am I can show them,” he 
muttered. “I can’t do it here in Boston. I’ll 
go to some place where no one knows me; that 
should prove what I have in me.” 

He went down the steps to the old grillroom. 
He ate sparingly and a curious reaction began to 
come over him. He knew that he loved Ellen, 
deeply loved her, and yet now he had a sense of 
freedom and a desire to defy that love. For 
weeks he had been pounded and beaten in daily 
battle. His old ideas had one by one been 
flouted. Save for his father there had been no 
touch of sympathy or understanding that he 
could recognize. 

Life seemed suddenly hopeless; a feeling 
almost of panic took hold of him. Then he 
squared his shoulders; little muscles about his 
jaw tightened. Could Phelps Gray at that in¬ 
stant have seen his son he would have recog¬ 
nized in the young face the likeness of his own 
father. 

Harry drank his coffee slowly. Having 
nothing else to do, he spent the rest of the 
evening at the theater. 

The second act was commencing when he 


HIGH HURDLES 


105 


entered the lobby. At the inner door he met 
Catewell and Hawley. They greeted him like 
a long-lost friend. “How goes the battle?” asked 
Hawley. “Where you working?” 

“Pm going West to-morrow.” 

“Pleasure trip?” inquired Catewell. 

“No, business,” Harry answered, and then, 
as though the word pleased him, he repeated it 
— “business.” 

At the end of the performance he moved 
impatiently up the aisle. Ahead of him in the 
throng he caught sight of Arthur Clark. He was 
with another man whom Harry did not know. 
The sight of Clark kindled his rancor like a 
match touched to powder. In a moment all the 
hatred, jealousy, and disappointment of the past 
year burst into a flame. Vividly he remembered 
the night Clark had called him a quitter and he 
had taken the insult dumbly; he recalled their 
various collisions in regard to Ellen, and sharp- 
etched in his memory was the night at the res¬ 
taurant when Clark had found him in a situation 
which he had seen fit to interpret as compromis¬ 
ing. That episode Clark had in some way con¬ 
veyed to the dean; doubtless it had been the 
basis for his insinuations to Ellen. 


106 


HIGH HURDLES 


After the performance Harry walked aimlessly 
down the sidewalk to the alley beside the the¬ 
ater. Clark was standing at the corner. 

“Hello, Gray,” he called out. “Waiting for a 
little night life?” 

A sudden cold fury seized Harry. Deliber¬ 
ately he walked over to where Clark stood: 
“What did you say?” 

Clark regarded him oddly, obviously puzzled 
at the stern quality in Harry’s voice. “Why, I 
asked you if you were waiting for a little night 
life. You needn’t look so virtuous, Gray,” he 
added. “You’ll recall we have met after the 
theater before this.” 

“Do you remember,” Harry demanded, “one 
time a few months ago you called me a quitter? 
You did, didn’t you? Well, I didn’t do to you 
what I should have done. That’s one thing. In 
addition, I’ve learned what kind of a man you 
really are. Let me suggest to you that a gentle¬ 
man doesn’t lie about another man behind his 
back.” 

Clark’s face reddened. “Are you trying to 
call me a liar?” he asked. 

“I asked if you remember calling me a quit¬ 
ter.” Harry’s voice was low and vibrant. “Come 


HIGH HURDLES 107 

back here in the alley; I’m going to do to you 
what I ought to have done then.” 

“What’s the trouble, Gray? I believe you’ve 
been drinking.” Clark forced a thin smile. “You 
fool, I’m not going to fight you.” 

“Perhaps you will now.” 

With a sudden swing Harry swept the flat of 
his bare right hand against the other’s face. Full 
in the mouth it caught him, and as Harry’s hand 
fell back a thin trickle of blood ran down from 
Clark’s upper lip over the even whiteness of 
his teeth. A little crowd had gathered, and as 
Clark started to return the blow a couple of 
bystanders thrust themselves between the two 
men. 

“All right. All right,” Clark assented. “Come, 
Gray.” He spoke in a lower voice. “Let’s get 
out of this.” 

They turned down the alley. Neither spoke. 
Past the stage door was a pocket cut in from the 
alley between two buildings. A yellow electric 
light burned dimly over a loading platform at 
its far end. Rough cobblestones gave an uneven 
footing and the ground was strewn with a litter 
of torn papers, with here and there a dark 
puddle of mud and water. 


108 


HIGH HURDLES 


“This will do. Take off your coat!” There 
was a totally new note in Harry’s voice. 

In a second both men were in their shirt 
sleeves. Clark, a fraction of a second quicker 
than Harry, seized the offensive and rushed his 
opponent back under a hail of blows. In the 
dim light, Harry saw Clark’s right shoot out. 
Instinctively he threw his head to one side and 
as the clenched fist passed over his shoulder he 
flung himself at his antagonist, smashing heavily 
against the baffling barrier of Clark’s defense. 
Then he saw an opening and swung with his 
right as Clark sprang free to deliver another 
blow. He felt his fist smash into the white face 
before him and saw his antagonist jolted back¬ 
ward. With a rush Clark recovered and sprang 
at him. Vainly Harry tried to counter. Clark 
feinted with his right and shot home a left upper¬ 
cut. The blow seemed to shatter Harry’s vision; 
before his eyes sharp lights flashed and were 
gone. He reeled backward dazed and confused. 
Again a blow caught him full between the eyes. 
As though flung from a height, he crashed back 
against the brick wall behind and collapsed, a 
limp figure in the mire of the cobbled way. 

With a hand slipping in the mud, he managed 


HIGH HURDLES 


109 


to raise himself on his elbow. Bending low over 
him, Clark struck the upturned face. From the 
gashed upper lip the blood spurted. Far off he 
heard Clark’s words: “This’ll hold you for a 
while.” Again the fist struck the bloody mouth, 
and Harry’s head fell back against the stones. 

For a moment Clark regarded the sprawled 
body at his feet. Then he turned and walked 
slowly away. 

It was some minutes before Harry could get 
to his feet. With his handkerchief he wiped the 
blood from his face. His head ached dully, and 
his lip smarted where Clark’s fist had bruised it. 
He leaned against the dark wall of a building to 
regain his strength. He had been beaten phys¬ 
ically, but the result was a moral victory. He 
had carried himself well. With his head erect, 
he walked out of the alley. . . . 

The lights were burning in office windows 
when, on the day following, Harry drove down 
to South Station with his baggage. He bought 
his ticket and a berth to Chicago. Suddenly a 
friendly hand slapped his shoulder; he turned 
quickly. It was Jack Dixon. 

Conscious of a swollen lip and a black eye, 
Harry felt an inclination to escape the question 


110 


HIGH HURDLES 


which seemed inevitable. But if Dixon noticed, 
he made no comment. “Well, Harry, where are 
you going?” he demanded. 

Harry squared his shoulders. “I’m going 
West,” he answered, “to find a job. I was fired, 
you know, at mid-year. I thought,” he added 
candidly, “I was a little too good, and I didn’t 
realize that Harvard was a lot too good for me.” 

Dixon put a hand on his shoulder. “Harry, 
old man,” he said, “there are always a few fel¬ 
lows in every class who don’t get the idea. You 
tried to lead a selfish life there and be happy. 
It can’t be done. I’m sorry. I like you, and some 
day we’ll meet again.” 

Their hands clasped in a firm grip. . . . 

At a great gray stone hotel on Michigan 
Avenue, on the evening of his arrival, Harry 
dined in a room where water splashed over a 
fountain of colored glass and where fragments 
of talk and echoes of merriment from men and 
women at small tables accentuated his deepen¬ 
ing sense of loneliness. Dinner over, he took a 
short walk on the broad avenue before the hotel, 
but wet snow driven before a cold wind from the 
lake discouraged him and he returned to the 
warmth and quiet of his room. 


HIGH HURDLES 


111 


As he dressed next morning Harry did some 
hard thinking. The night before he had counted 
the slim sheaf of bills in his pocketbook; his 
funds were nearly exhausted. Within a few 
days at the most he must get work. The alter¬ 
natives were a large or a small community. He 
must practice the most rigid economy: no longer 
did he feel confident to command a salary suffi¬ 
cient for luxuries. He was a product of the city, 
but he realized that he could not follow even 
remotely his former city existence. He decided 
on a small community — where, he did not 
know. Nor did he particularly care what kind 
of work might come his way. 

A few years before, he had met a friend of 
the father of a boy he had been visiting. Luckily 
he remembered the name — John P. Carleton. 
Carleton lived in Chicago. Perhaps he could 
advise him. 

When he came out from breakfast the lobby 
was filled with men. A few months ago he would 
have despised them, as he had despised all 
crowds. But to-day these loud-talking, conspicu¬ 
ously dressed individuals, chewing black cigars 
and arguing points brought up at some conven¬ 
tion they were attending, impressed him. They 


112 


HIGH HURDLES 


in their measure drank the wine of success. He 
was an outsider, a tyro in the grim game of 
life. 

Back in his room, he wrote a brief, affection¬ 
ate note to his father, explaining, he felt quite 
plausibly, his abrupt departure from Boston. 
There was real opportunity in the West, he 
wrote; he was confident that he had decided 
wisely. His heart misgave him as he put down 
the words; he thought of the feeble, gray¬ 
haired man who would read the letter before his 
study fire, and hot tears bleared his eyes. He 
added extravagant reasons for his confidence. 

Harry telephoned John Carleton, recalling 
their past meeting. He was in Chicago for only 
a few days, he explained. It was his first visit. 
Would Mr. Carleton give him a word of advice? 
Mr. Carleton’s voice was friendly. Harry might 
call on him that morning at eleven. 

It was a quarter before the hour when Harry 
presented himself at Carleton’s office. “Glad to 
see you, Gray,” Carleton said. “Good of you to 
call on me. Long in town? Always like to have 
Harvard men drop in on me. I was ’ 98 .” 

Instinctively Harry felt drawn to this slender, 
dark-eyed man Who greeted him with a courtesy 


HIGH HURDLES 113 

that seemed to make his call a matter of impor¬ 
tance. 

“I am here,” Harry explained simply, “be¬ 
cause I was fired at the mid-year, and I want a 
job.” 

“Why did you come to Chicago?” 

Harry hesitated: “I tried to get work in Bos¬ 
ton, but I couldn’t get anything. I figured that 
I would do better to come where no one knows 
me. I don’t want to work in Chicago even. I 
want to go to some small town and take a man’s 
job.” 

Carleton watched Harry’s face narrowly. 
“You’ve had some disappointments lately?” 

“Yes.” 

“Is there a girl?” 

The personal question did not offend him. 
“Yes.” 

“And you’ve come out here to see what stuff 
you have in you; to test yourself! I think you’ll 
win out if you hold to your faith.” He paused 
for a moment. “Do you really want to start at 
the bottom and work with your body as well as 
with your head?” 

“That’s exactly what I want.” 

Carleton leaned back in his chair. “This com- 


114 


HIGH HURDLES 


pany, of which I happen to be the president, 
operates a number of coal mines in the southern 
part of the State. Our largest property is at 
Carbon.” He wrote a few words on a memo¬ 
randum sheet and handed it to Harry: “Here, 
take this. It will get you started. The rest is 
up to you.” 

Harry looked at the yellow sheet. It read: 

Dear Colby: Give H. Gray a Job. 

J. P. C. 

“If you really want to fight this out,” Carle- 
ton explained, “the less you may seem a protege 
of mine the better. Colby is our general man¬ 
ager. He’ll find out what you can do and put 
you at it.” Carleton held out his hand. “Good 
luck, Gray. I hope to hear of you one of these 
days.” . . . 

The train to Carbon carried no sleeping cars, 
and dawn found Harry with haggard lines in 
his white face and eyes tired by loss of sleep. 
Wiping an outlook in the moist pane, he looked 
out. For miles the flat fields extended to the 
horizon. Clumps of trees lifted black skeletons; 
occasional roads twisted their frozen ruts of mud 
into the distance; cornfields brown with the 


HIGH HURDLES 


115 


waste of last year’s harvest edged the fences, 
and here and there a small farmhouse stood soli¬ 
tary and desolate in the dull dawn. The sun 
rose behind a pall of gray, a few streaks of rose 
glowing between heavy strata of cloud. 

“Next station, Carbon!” called the conductor. 

Slowly the train ground to a stop. The black 
shadow of the station building darkened the 
window. 

It was cold with the raw first breath of day. 
Leaving his bags at the station, Harry walked 
along the single street. 

Far down, three-quarters of a mile away, 
framed under the gaunt black limbs, was a slen¬ 
der tower of steel, a black silhouette against the 
somber sky. Reaching the mine, Harry pushed 
open the door of a small building marked 
“Office” and inquired for Mr. Colby. A stout, 
young man in a flannel shirt told him to wait. 

Through the dingy glass in the window beside 
him Harry surveyed the setting of this new chap¬ 
ter of his existence. Slender and lofty, the tower 
of the tipple reared itself above the prairie. 
From high up in its steel structure slim cables 
sank down to the shaft mouth beneath. Near by, 
two tall brick stacks indicated the power house. 


116 


HIGH HURDLES 


Other buildings clustered about the tipple, and 
beneath it in every direction were tracks and 
cars, empty or filled with coal. Coal smeared the 
landscape. In flurries the fine black dust eddied 
with every passing breeze from the tipple; coal 
dust covered the ground with an ebon blanket. 

The mine manager arrived at seven-thirty. He 
was a small, spare man with a close-clipped red 
mustache and round, hard blue eyes that peered 
sharply from a weathered face. 

Harry’s hand fingered the letter in his pocket 
while he introduced himself. Suddenly he thrust 
it back. Why should he enter his first job under 
another’s auspices? He w<ould not present the 
letter; he would try his luck alone. 

Simply he stated his case. He wanted a job. 
He wanted to learn the coal business. Could 
Mr. Colby use him? 

The mine manager looked at him closely. 
“You don’t care what you do?” he asked. “You 
ain’t a miner; that’s easy to see. What can you 
do?” 

Harry met the question squarely. “I’m 
strong,” he said simply. “All I want is enough 
to live on. Any job you have will be appre¬ 
ciated.” 


HIGH HURDLES 


117 


Colby eyed him, still puzzled. “Well, I can’t 
say as wte need any men right now,” he finally 
said, “but you can find Charley Plunkett, and 
tell him I said you was to load. You’ll have to 
get some clothes and your outfit. Where you 
living?” 

“I haven’t found any place yet.” 

Colby meditated. The phenomenon of this 
soft-spoken young man fascinated him. “John 
Hagen might take you in. He lost his boarder 
last week.” 

Harry made mental note of the name. He 
had not asked the pay he was to receive — in 
fact, he hadn’t thought about it. Had he done 
so, he might have compared this meeting with 
another one in Boston. 

He was not yet ready to appreciate the signi¬ 
ficance of the comparison. 

Another day had dawned. Night had swept 
clean the sky, and the sun had risen in a vault 
of faultless blue. Ten minutes before the blast 
of the great whistle on the power house Harry 
waited at the shaft mouth. Clean as the sky 
were his blue overalls and jumper, and the white 
canvas pit cap on his head was fresh from the 
box in the company store. He carried a pick 


118 


HIGH HURDLES 


and shovel and a shiny tin lunch box. He filed 
down past the checker, gave his number and 
found himself standing with a dozen men at the 
square black rim of the man hoist. 

Out of the corner of his eye he regarded them, 
and secretly admired the greasy black of their 
clothes, the black of their caps, and the battered 
aspect of their dinner pails. On their part they 
gave him a more frank inspection, an inspection 
touched with the same tinge of curiosity that had 
affected the mine manager. 

The hoist, a sideless elevator, hung like a 
bucket by its handle, rose suddenly out of the 
shaft, and Harry and a dozen others crowded on 
it. For a second the sunshine slanted on black¬ 
ened figures; then, as though falling, the hoist 
slipped suddenly downward. Pit lamps in cap 
visors flared with sooty flame in the draft; the 
walls of the shaft, wet and black, seemed to 
stream upward; a pressure came in Harry’s ears. 
The hoist came to a stop, and before him a long 
tunnel stretched into the blackness, occasional 
electric lights magnifying the distance. 

The sun had set when the man hoist carried 
them to the top. In the distant west the pale 
amber of the afterglow brightened a sky already 


HIGH HURDLES 


119 


faintly whitened with stars. But to Harry’s 
eyes, after the long hours of velvet blackness 
and blank silence, the world seemed filled with 
light and sound and vast spaciousness. His 
hands wfere black and the palms and fingers 
pained from blisters. Black also with dust and 
oil and sweat were his clothes and pit cap. 

As he walked up the long street from the mine 
to John Hagen’s house he recalled, as in a dream, 
the hours he had slaved beside cavernous cars 
which he filled with coal from the gleaming shat¬ 
tered pile at the room end. Plunkett, a taciturn, 
lantern-jawed man in charge of that section of 
the mine, had led him through a mile of laby¬ 
rinthine tunnels to his working place. In a few 
brief words he had sketched his work, and at 
the close of day led him back through the black 
maze to the man hoist. 

His body ached as he plodded up the road, 
but a sense of peace came over him as he turned 
in at the gate of Hagen’s yard. He washed him¬ 
self in the basin beside the kitchen sink and 
hung his blackened working clothes in the lean- 
to. Alice Hagen, a slender, good-looking girl of 
eighteen, was moving between the table and the 
stove, cooking the dinner and setting the table. 


120 


HIGH HURDLES 


Harry sat down opposite the scale master. Pres¬ 
ently Alice joined them, and when dinner was 
over the men smoked their pipes while the girl 
cleared the table and washed the dishes. 

There was a sameness in the days that fol¬ 
lowed. In a few w'eeks Harry found himself able 
to follow the dark corridors of his section of the 
mine as a man at night moves through the 
familiar streets of a city. In the long hours he 
grew accustomed to the silence, and his ears 
began to catch the faint, trickling sounds of 
seeping gas, the knocking of cracking strata far 
above his head, and the soft hiss of the air pipe 
— sounds at first unnoticed. But chiefly he was 
aware of the constant change in his body. His 
hands had grown hard and leathery, the soft 
muscles of his back and arms had changed as 
into cords of ductile steel; he had become lean 
and powerful. 

The evenings were of two sorts. At first he 
smoked his pipe with John Hagen and went 
early to bed. Then one night he and Hagen 
walked together to the poolroom and thereafter 
he alternated his evenings between the Hagen 
kitchen and the warm tobacco-filled room where 
Pete Petorolos dispensed his foaming bottles of 


HIGH HURDLES 


121 


illicit beer. In the hazy atmosphere the men 
leaned back in their chairs against the broken 
plaster of the walls and drank their beer from 
the bottle, while Pete’s wife, a huge slattern 
Croatian, played worn records of cheap dance 
music on the battered phonograph. Harry grad¬ 
ually began to know, on terms of easy intimacy, 
men whom he never encountered during his 
working days: machine men, shot firers, and the 
drivers of the mine locomotives, Americans and 
foreigners — men of every breed and instinct. 

At first he thought but little of his past life, 
so suddenly thrust behind him. Then gradually 
dawned on him the realization of a new self that 
was being created. The realization brought no 
particular satisfaction. He had come, broken by 
the humiliation of disappointment, to try him¬ 
self in a new environment. The new life suited 
him; he was content to lead it undisturbed. 

Spring came with lengthening days and soft, 
moist scents at dawn and evening. On Sundays 
he walked out through the level country, often 
alone, occasionally with a companion, and once 
with Alice Hagen. He had written to his 
father a sprightly letter, suggesting somehow 
that he was enduring a brief apprenticeship in 


122 


HIGH HURDLES 


order to fit him for some high station in the 
industry. The letter lacked sincerity. He 
dared not contemplate the future. But it was 
necessary to explain in some manner his new 
vocation to the gray-haired man who would read 
his words before the study fire. Once also he 
had written to Ellen. Far back in his brain he 
realized that she was the motivating force that 
held him here, but he made no mention or 
suggestion of the thought in his brief sentences; 
he wrote rather as though his life had been 
established permanently in Carbon. 

It was Saturday night, and the phonograph 
ground out its blatant melodies. A larger crowd 
than usual lined the walls of Pete’s poolroom. 
The air was blue with biting smoke, and the bare 
floor was slippery with the slop of spilled beer. 
Harry and Hagen were in a corner talking the 
small talk of the mine. Through the door came 
and went a continuous stream of men. 

The beer was heady, and there were a few who 
had sampled the brown quart bottles that Pete 
kept in the rear room. High above the tumult 
of voices and the scraping of the worn steel 
needle of the phonograph rose the voice of Red 
Devon. In his right hand he held a quart bottle 


HIGH HURDLES 


123 


of beer, his broad scarnailed thumb checking the 
foamy contents. Kicking a chair out of his 
path, he swung into the open space in the center 
of the room. “Let’s dance,” he shouted. 

An old felt hat was pulled aslant his forehead, 
throwing his broad face into shadow. The 
throat of his shirt was open, disclosing his 
corded neck and hairy chest. Like a man mis¬ 
shapen by muscular development, he swayed as 
his small blue eyes fastened now on one and 
now on another of the men around him with an 
expression more suggestive of insanity than 
intoxication. He was one of the mine-timber 
men, strong as the beams of oak his sledge drove 
home beneath weakened roofs. 

The crowd regarded him with apathy, Harry 
with idle curiosity. Their eyes met. 

“Come out an’ dance, you.” He waved the 
bottle at Harry. Then, as he saw Harry ignore 
him, he strode heavily across the floor. 

“Damn you, you city — ” The sentence 
trailed off in a flood of vileness. 

A curious silence followed. The phonograph 
record ended and the needle “weasped” 
raucously until some one pushed the stop. Red 
Devon was the mine bully. His companions 


124 


HIGH HURDLES 


were accustomed to his drunken abuse and 
violence. But to-night his demonstration was 
directed against this newcomer. The crowd 
watched the baiting, wondering how far Red 
would go; what the stranger would do. 

With another burst of invective, Devon 
pointed the bottle at Harry and withdrew his 
thumb from the mouth. A foamy spurt of 
beer shot out as from the nozzle of a siphon 
bottle. The aim was true. The creamy 
deluge struck Harry square in the face and 
slopped down across his chest. 

The silence in the room was complete. 
Wiping the beer from his face, Harry rose slowly 
from his chair and pointed a long finger at his 
tormentor. 

“Devon” — he spoke in a low, unnatural 
voice — “you’re drunk, but, by God, if you do 
that again or call me any more names I’ll smash 
you.” 

Red’s small blue eyes narrowed, and a deep 
flush flooded his face. With unexpected sud¬ 
denness his arm swung in a quick half-circle 
and the bottle shot from his hand. There was 
a sharp shatter of broken glass as it shivered 
against the wall, and at the same instant a thin 


HIGH HURDLES 


12S 


red line began slowly to trickle from Harry’s 
forehead where the spinning neck had nicked 
him as it passed. 

With a bound Harry cleared the space 
between them. All the weeks of his arduous 
labor served him. Lean as a panther, he knew 
that he was fit. And in the small eyes that 
peered at him he saw the cowardice of the bully 
momentarily transformed to unthinking passion 
by the fumes of cheap whisky. 

There was no hesitating. Confusing his 
opponent by feinting with his right, Harry shot 
his left to the head, jolting Devon backward. 
Like stampeded cattle, the watchers pressed 
against the walls, clearing the floor. But the 
blow was too high for a knockout. 

With a rush Devon dived forward, his head 
bowed. Harry leaped to one side, and as the 
man flung past him his fist again crashed against 
the great red head, and he saw Devon straighten, 
dazed bewilderment in his face. 

“Look out!” shouted a voice. “His knife!” 

Devon’s right hand had slipped down to his 
belt. There was the flash of a short steel blade 
in an upward thrust. 

As the warning sounded Harry saw the move 


126 


HIGH HURDLES 


of his antagonist. A heavy wooden chair stood 
at his elbow. Seizing the back with both hands, 
he swung it above him. The electric light 
shivered into darkness. There was a splinter¬ 
ing of wood, a sharp crash, and abrupt silence. 
Matches here and there struck yellow spurts of 
flame. In the dim light he saw - Devon, a 
crumpled heap upon the floor. 

“You fixed him fine, Harry,” said John 
Hagen — “the big bum.” 

They were walking home through the star¬ 
light. In the liquid purple of the west the 
scimitar of a new moon shone white and sharp 
as steel. Soft breezes rustled among the 
shadowy branches of the buckeyes. 

They turned into the gate, their feet rattling 
on the board walk. From the kitchen a yellow 
square of lamplight framed the window. 

“But look out for ’im,” continued Hagen. 
“That’s my thinking. He’ll not be forgetting 
the thrashing you gave him to-night.” 

They stepped into the sudden warmth of the 
kitchen. Alice Hagen was sewing in a rocking- 
chair beside the table, a mass of rough-dried 
garments piled on the red and white tablecloth. 

She looked up as the men entered and a little 


HIGH HURDLES 


127 


startled cry burst from her lips: “You’re hurt! ” 

Hagen threw out his chest. His boarder had 
become an object of pride. “I’ll say that Red 
Devon’s worse!” he commented. 

“Red Devon!” The girl turned a frightened 
look at Harry. “I hate that man. He’s always 
pestering me — the big bum!” 

She was busy with a basin and warm water 
from the kettle on the back of the stove. “Sit 
down here,” she commanded. 

Harry felt her firm fingers deftly move about 
his temple. “There, that’ll do,” she com¬ 
mented: “just a scratch.” 

For a second their eyes met as she leaned 
forward to look at him. Then, with sudden 
consciousness, she turned away. 

In the corner Hagen was still commenting 
on the battle: “Crowned him with a chair! 
If I’m not telling you the holy truth, he looked 
like a cave-in.” 


V 


The weeks following his fight with Red Devon 
passed uneventfully for Harry. He had made 
a dangerous enemy, but he had made friends 
as well. The miners looked at him with new 
respect. He spent less and less time at Pete’s 
poolroom and more with Alice Hagen. He 
found himself looking forward to the evenings 
when, while Alice mended, he would read aloud. 
Sometimes they walked for an hour or two in 
the damp coolness. 

In August, one sultry morning when thunder¬ 
clouds pressed heavily over the flat landscape, 
Harry was called up out of the mine to Colby’s 
office. 

“You’re Plunkett’s assistant; assistant boss 
of No. 3,” the little mine manager stated. 
Then he spat heavily on the floor and the inter¬ 
view was over. 

His new duties freed Harry from much of the 
physical labor to which he had grown 
accustomed, and at first he missed this outlet 


HIGH HURDLES 


129 


for his energies. Now, however, he was able to 
move at will throughout his section of the mine, 
and, under Plunkett’s laconic tutelage, he 
rapidly grasped the details of the vast operation. 

Of the future he felt a helpless uncertainty. 
The far horizon was still unbroken by any land¬ 
fall. Like the rim of an empty sea, in the 
center of which he struggled shipwrecked, it 
seemed to surround him. In the near waters 
floated the wreckage of the past. And through 
all his thoughts moved Ellen Davenport, now 
like a memory of some one gone forever from 
his life, now like an urge to carry strongly for¬ 
ward to an ultimate reward. He had set himself 
at least a year of work at Carbon. Perhaps by 
then he would hear from Carleton and advance¬ 
ment honorably won would remove him from 
his exile. And then Alice Hagen would move 
faintly across the screen of his mind, a strong, 
tender companion who made life tenable in this 
hard environment. 

One evening late in August he found a letter 
waiting for him. The address was typewritten, 
and in the upper left-hand corner of the 
envelope was the firm name of the Holman part¬ 
nership in small black letters. It was the first 


130 


HIGH HURDLES 


time he had heard from Holman since the day 
he rudely swept out of his office in Boston. As 
Harry broke open the envelope he felt himself 
flush at the recollection. 

He read the letter twice. Then he walked to 
the door and looked eastward at the darkening 
night. A convulsive tremor shook his shoulders. 
With black hands he brushed the hot drops 
from his cheeks. His father had died three 
weeks ago, Holman wrote. They had found 
him dead in his bed one morning. There could 
have been no suffering. No one had known 
Harry’s address until Holman found one of 
Harry’s letters from Carbon among his father’s 
papers. The paragraph that followed con¬ 
cerned his father’s affairs. Apparently they 
were worse than even Holman had anticipated. 
Holman Was struggling to unsnarl the tangle; 
but this might take months to accomplish. He 
closed the letter with words of sympathy, and 
the assurance that should Harry require it his 
help would be always available. 

There was a sound, and Harry turned. Alice 
had come into the room. He handed her the 
letter. She read it slowly. Then her hand 
went out to him. For a few long moments he 


HIGH HURDLES 131 

held it; there was comfort and understanding 
in the pressure of the small, strong fingers. 

When he reached the mine bottom the follow¬ 
ing morning he turned down the main entry 
and struck out in a long swinging stride over the 
smoothly beaten dust between the rails. Since 
his elevation to be Plunkett’s assistant the boss 
of Section 3 had left more and more of his duties 
to the silent young man who seemed to catch on 
with surprising quickness. 

As he walked along the path his lamp cast 
flickering shadows on the vast avenue of props 
that lined the tunnel and on the massive timbers 
across the roof. With the regularity of city 
blocks, but at much shorter intervals, the 
“rooms” turned at right angles to the right and 
left, other tunnels being driven a certain dis¬ 
tance in from the main entry through the deep 
black seam of coal, each separated from the 
rooms on either side by a “barrier pillar” or 
thick wall of coal. Far down in the headings 
of some of the rooms were soft, yellow points 
of light where men were working, and when he 
stopped for a minute he could hear the whining 
rasp of the electric undercutting machines 
carving out a deep aperture level with the floor 


132 


HIGH HURDLES 


beneath the coal breast in the room end so that 
at night the shot firers might blast down the 
tons of unsupported coal and by that much 
extend the room deeper into the seam. 

At a brattice door, where the current of venti¬ 
lation was diverted, he stopped for a moment to 
chat with the old doorkeeper, whose duties con¬ 
sisted in opening and closing the door at the 
passage of each train. There was the dull 
clang of a gong far down the entry, and the 
doorkeeper swung open the big door. Filling 
the tunnel with its bulk, an electric locomotive 
roared past, the trolley striking blue and yellow 
sparks from the low-hung wire. Crouched 
behind the controller sat the driver, the flame of 
his light bent back like a sooty comet in the 
breeze. Behind the engine rattled past a long 
string of square black cars heavy with coal. 

Harry walked on behind the retreating train. 
There had been a “fall” somewhere in a room 
heading in a big panel or division of the section, 
and the timber gang had already gone to shore 
up the roof. He would see what was being done 
and report to Plunkett. There was a flicker of 
lights and the sound of ax and sledge as he 
turned a final corner and stumbled over a pile 


HIGH HURDLES 


133 


of broken rock. The roof in the room end had 
let go, and the floor was piled to the height of a 
man with great gray slabs of shale, some of 
them a ton in weight. High above was a lofty 
vault of gleaming gray stone, and in this 
opening the timbermen were working, filling in 
the high aperture with a crib of timbers that 
rested on a stockade of heavy props which they 
had placed on either side of the room. 

Far up in the mass of timbers Red Devon, 
his half-stripped body gleaming with sweat, 
directed the hoisting and placing of the beams. 
With long, deft strokes of his ax he trimmed the 
butts of the timbers while others sledged them 
fast into place. Conscious of a new light in the 
darkness of the room, he looked down at Harry 
and as quickly shifted his eyes again to his work 
as he recognized the face beneath the pit lamp. 

It was a fleeting glance, but as Harry turned 
away to retrace his steps he recalled its 
malevolence. 

Through his months of work in the mine, 
Harry had long ago learned his way through 
every room entry and crosscut as a man 
intuitively knows the streets and lanes of his 
native village. There was a geometric regular- 


134 


HIGH HURDLES 


ity that made the whole system intelligible, 
and he no longer felt the darkness and the depth 
of rock above him as appalling forces. 

Instead of returning by the main entry, he 
struck up through an abandoned working and, 
feeling his way carefully over a pile of fallen 
rock, came sharply on a barrier of smooth white 
boards that completely blocked the end of the 
tunnel. In the center of the obstruction was 
a small door a few feet above the ground. 
Pushing it back along its grooves, he squirmed 
through the opening and closed it behind him. 
The air was very still and brilliantly clear. On 
either hand a huge tunnel extended. The roof 
for the greater part was unsupported, but here 
and there rose some lofty props covered with 
the moist white fungus of decay. The remains 
of an old track and a few battered and crum¬ 
bling ties were scattered along the floor, and 
here and there were frequent piles of gray rock, 
each pile matched by a gap in the gray roof 
above. 

He took his lamp from his cap and held it 
high above him. Far off to the right, where the 
tunnel dipped slightly, was the glint of a pool 
of water, black as glass. The tunnel was an 


HIGH HURDLES 


135 


old abandoned air course that he had one day 
discovered on the blue print of the mine and 
had often used as a short cut to the bottom. 

Picking his way over the uneven floor, a ten- 
minute walk brought him to another brattice 
in the side of the air course. Here another 
sliding panel pushed aside at his touch and, 
climbing through it, he found himself at the 
head of a worked room, a couple of minutes’ 
walk from the foot of the man hoist. It was 
late in the afternoon, and the men of the day 
shift crowded the main entry around the 
bottom waiting for the hoist to lift them to the 
upper world. Harry was standing by the scale 
house, a rough board room built in a crosscut, 
waiting for Hagen. 

“Hey, Harry !” a voice called above the sound 
of many voices, and Plunkett pushed through 
the crowd. “There’s another fall up in East 
Panel. The timber gang have gone over there. 
I’ll go with ’em, and if anything more happens 
to-night you come down. I’ll leave word to 
have some one telephone you.” 

Harry assented. 

He was glad that Plunkett, perhaps under 
the prod of conscience, had elected to visit this 


136 


HIGH HURDLES 


new fall, but further trouble that night seemed 
a remote possibility. 

After dinner Sam Dawson dropped into the 
Hagens’ kitchen. Dawson was a newcomer at 
the mine, a young engineer employed by the 
company as a mine surveyor. Both Harry and 
Alice had found him a pleasant companion on 
their Sunday walks and a congenial addition 
to their evenings in the Hagen kitchen. 

For an hour they talked of many things, but 
Dawson finally began quietly to dominate the 
conversation, and the other two found them¬ 
selves silently listening as he unfolded the hopes 
and ambitions that had led him to Carbon. As 
he talked a light seemed to kindle his blue eyes. 
Alice had laid aside her sewing and leaned back 
in her chair, her hands clasped in her lap, her 
eyes far away in the magic lands that Dawson 
was describing. 

“This is only a stepping-stone,” he told them. 
“There are practical things here I must learn; 
some money I must save. Then I shall push 
on. There’s the whole world to choose from, 
and this work of mine can carry me anywhere. 
I’ve been reading about South America, and 
perhaps that’s where I’ll go next. There are 


HIGH HURDLES 


137 


great railroads to be built over the Andes, vast 
projects in tremendous rivers. And there’s 
China; there’s a place for the young men of 
to-day, a nation with a civilization centuries old 
ready for a rebirth into one of the greatest 
nations of the world. Suppose her undeveloped 
man power were combined with modern 
machinery. The thought is simply staggering!” 

“I may lead out my life here,” said the girl 
simply. 

Dawson did not hear her low-pitched 
comment. 

“And Australia,” he continued, “a country 
as big as the United States, with every con¬ 
ceivable resource and a population less than 
that of New York City. There’s a field for 
you: mining, hydroelectric developments, ir¬ 
rigation!” 

“What is your final aim?” Harry broke in. 
“After you have had a hand in these big things 
in all these places — what then?” 

“My aim? Why, I want to be an engineer 
of international reputation.” His face became 
very earnest as he spoke. “I want men to 
speak of ‘the big job that Dawson did’ with 
this project or that. Think of the years 


138 


HIGH HURDLES 


Goethals’s name will stick with the Panama 
Canal. That is the right kind of monument 
for a man!” 

Harry caught the enthusiasm. “I used to 
think,” he said, “that what I wanted was to 
have enough money to belong to a few good 
clubs and live in comfort all my days in a big 
city with some work to occupy me and not 
enough to bother me. Now I don’t know what 
I want, but I know I don’t want that. Go on, 
Dawson.” 

“Well,” Dawson continued, “it puts some 
excitement into life. Think of slaving for 
months in the heat and muck of some tropic 
jungle and then one day it’s all over and the 
battle’s won and the big shiny cars go skimming 
over the rails that you almost died for. Lord, 
but it makes me tingle to think of the thrill 
of it.” 

“There’s plenty of struggle and death here 
at Carbon,” interpolated the girl. 

“You bet there is. And I often think, when 
I see those cars of coal going up the shaft, that 
we fellows are the boys behind the industry of 
the nation. By George, it’s we who put that 
mile-a-minute speed into the Twentieth Century 


HIGH HURDLES 139 

Limited. We melt the iron ore and make the 
steel for skyscrapers and battleships.” 

The telephone rang sharply, then a second 
ring followed the first. “That’s our ring,” said 
Alice. “Who can be calling us so late?” 

She hurried to the telephone. “It’s for you, 
Harry.” 

He got the message and came back across 
the room, a worried look on his face. “It’s 
Plunkett,” he explained. “He’s been down all 
evening. Says there’s a squeeze starting in 
East Panel. I must go down and get on the 
job. Sounds like trouble.”. . . 

A mine locomotive was standing on a siding 
near the foot of the hoisting shaft, and Harry 
climbed into the driver’s seat, set the trolley, 
and slowly threw over the controller. A few 
hundred feet from the entrance to East Panel 
he parked the machine on a siding. 

In the early days of his tutelage Harry had 
often pored over the great blue print of the 
workings. The mine was laid out on a system 
of panels or units, each panel representing a 
great rectangle of coal through the center of 
which two parallel entries or tunnels were 
driven. The result was a great ribbed area 


140 


HIGH HURDLES 


and the surrounding wall of “barrier pillars” 
protected adjoining panels, for if too much 
coal were removed in any panel the roof might 
start to cave in, but the area of collapse would 
be limited. 

At the mouth of East Panel a huge tangle of 
copper trolley wires was piled in the entry. 
Emergency electric lights rigged on the props 
gleamed brightly, and as Harry approached, 
a gang of men trundled a flat car laden with 
rails out of the mouth of the left entry. 

Plunkett was giving orders in a high, excited 
voice. 

“Them falls this morning was the start.” 
He turned to Harry. “Might have knowed it. 
Then just as you went out to-night Mike comes 
to me and says his locomotive jumps the tracks 
last three trips right in the middle of the panel. 
I walks through and knocks out my lamp on a 
beam where I knows there ought to be three 
feet clear head room. Then I hears her. 
Squeeze, I sez. And an hour ago I knows the 
panel’s done for. We’re getting out all the 
track and wire we can before she lets go. Six¬ 
teen timbermen in there getting out timbers, 
and there’s forty-two more men working at the 


HIGH HURDLES 


141 


rails and wires. Better go and look her over.” 

Robbed of too much coal, the supporting 
pillars within the panel had proved inadequate 
to carry the vast Weight of the four hundred 
feet of rock that pressed down upon the panel. 
Slowly the great strata were bending, and the 
pressure downward through the barrier pillars 
was pushing up the floor. Resistlessly floor 
and ceiling were closing like the jaws of a vise. 
Within ten hours, perhaps in an hour, would 
come a sudden rending crash, and, if the barrier 
pillars held, the roof of the entire panel would 
break clean and close down forever on that 
section of the mine. 

As Harry walked up the entry his ears began 
to catch a sharp tumult of unusual sounds. 
Louder they grew as he advanced, loud splitting 
sounds far above him in the overlying rock, and 
here and there in the room heads sudden thun¬ 
derous crashes as great slivers of stone were 
flung down. His head struck a roof beam. 
He was nearing the center of the panel where 
the floor and roof were pressing closest together. 
A tingling sensation against his hand caused 
him to look sharply at the glistening coal wall 
beside him. Under the terrific pressure the 


142 


HIGH HURDLES 


coal was disintegrating, and from the black 
surface a spray of fine coal particles shot out 
like sharp hailstones. Everywhere in the 
tumult of unnatural sound were men’s voices; 
pit lamps glowed like fire-flies in a marsh. 

A jagged splinter of stone crashed to the 
track in front. On either hand the sturdy oak 
props were bowed and splintering. In a room 
at his right a shock like a high explosive shook 
the air and he saw a gang of men dash tumbling 
to safety, an avalanche of stone and dust filling 
the room behind them. Flat car after flat car 
pushed past him. Up to the final hour the men 
were salvaging the steel and copper. It was 
a splendid retreat in the face of inevitable 
disaster. He joined the workers and with a 
crowbar tore up the rails from the tracks in 
the farthest rooms. Twice he helped push a 
loaded flat car through the entry to the unload¬ 
ing place beyond the barrier pillar, and each 
time the space between floor and roof had 
lessened. The last time he could barely pass 
stooping almost double. 

“Order out the men from the far side!” 
called Plunkett. 

Harry started back down the long left entry. 


HIGH HURDLES 


143 


In the few minutes since he had last passed the 
spot a fall of rock had blocked the tunnel. 
Through a crosscut he made for the right entry. 
It was open, but there was hardly three feet 
clearance in the middle. The roar of the 
rending strata pounded continuously. 

“Run!” he shouted to some men beside the 
track. They dropped their tools and dashed 
for safety. Again he shouted to another group, 
and they joined the fleeing procession. He 
counted them as they passed; there were still 
four timbermen somewhere ahead of him. 

Out of the gloom three men came pitching 
headlong down the track, their lights bobbing 
drunkenly as they fled. “Run!” they shouted 
at him. “She’s going!” 

“Where’s the other man?” he shouted. 

“Twenty-three, right,” they called as they 
fled past him. “He’s buried; can’t get him.” 

Harry dashed ahead and turned into the 
black mouth of Room 23. The floor was piled 
high with rock fragments, and, a few feet in, a 
gray pile reared like a wall from side to side. 
With all his might he shouted, and a distant 
voice answered behind the rock barrier. With 
a leap he half scaled its side and crawled along 


144 


HIGH HURDLES 


the top. Above him a huge slab hung balanced 
on a perpendicular splinter that a touch might 
dislodge. In the soft light of his lamp he saw 
Red Devon down on the floor beyond the fall. 
He was crawling heavily. 

“Hurt?” Harry shouted. 

“My leg’s broke!” Devon yelled back. 

In a minute Harry was at his side. They 
climbed the steep face of the fall and wriggled 
cautiously along the top, Devon’s leg dragging 
limply. Harry half carried, half dragged him 
down the other side to the room mouth and 
turned down the entry. Devon uttered a quick, 
awed cry: “She’s shut!” 

In the dim light they peered ahead. Slowly 
converging, the planes of the floor and roof of 
the mine had closed. They were entombed. 

A mad panic surged through Harry’s brain, 
then came the dullness of despair. He felt sick 
and the sweat ran in rivulets from his forehead. 

On his face on the black floor Devon was 
praying, mad with fear. Harry bent over him. 

“Come!” he shouted. “I know a way, if you 
can make it!” 

Devon tried to rise, and Harry seized him as 
he reeled in fear and pain. Again they stag- 


HIGH HURDLES 


145 


gered through the inferno of falling rock. 
Once they scaled a fall as high as the one behind 
which Devon had been struck down in 23. 
Each minute the roaring increased. They 
could no longer hear each other speak. Sud¬ 
denly at the end of an abandoned room into 
which they had penetrated gleamed the white 
wall of a brattice. Harry thrust back the 
sliding door and cautiously they wormed 
through the opening. Devon fell a limp mass 
on the floor beyond. 

Far off came the roar of the falling roof. 
There was a sharp, splintering shock. A few 
bits of stone tinkled down from the roof. 
Then silence. 

Harry sat down and wiped his face. “Well, 
she’s closed at last. We got out about in time, 
Devon.” 

The man, collapsed at his feet, looked at him 
through his small, unwinking eyes. . . . 

“You bet I wouldn’t have gone back after 
him.” Hagen softly pounded the table to 
emphasize his words. “That dirty dog Devon.” 

The story had finally been told, for the inquis¬ 
itive Hagen had wormed from Harry, bit by bit, 
the details of the rescue. To the mine manager 


146 


HIGH HURDLES 


Harry had simply reported that he found Devon 
with his leg broken and brought him out through 
the abandoned air course. As for Devon, his 
dull brain was still pondering why the man 
whom he considered his enemy had risked his 
life to save him. 

But it was Alice Hagen who saw in Harry’s 
slim recital of that terrible hour qualities that 
threw a new light upon him. . . . 

It was Sunday and at breakfast Harry pro¬ 
posed a walk across country. With an apron 
about his waist he helped Alice with the dishes 
that they might make an early start. For an 
hour they tramped across the level fields. Co vies 
of quail rose before them from the shelter of a 
cornfield; high in the sky crows cawed, wheeling 
in the warm sunshine. 

Harry and Alice were happy. Neither knew 
why and neither tried to guess. They sat down 
to rest and for a few minutes neither spoke. 

“How long are you going to stay in Carbon?” 
Alice asked. The abruptness of her question 
startled him. 

“I haven’t thought much about it, Alice,” he 
answered. There was another silence, then he 
continued: “I came here to get away from cer- 


HIGH HURDLES 


147 


tain influences, to try myself out. I have gained 
certain things, but I’m a coward about going 
back. It must be done, I suppose — I can’t be 
a miner forever — but it means starting up from 
the bottom again at home, in Boston, or in some 
other big city.” 

“I’ll miss you,” she said simply. 

Why should he go back? he demanded of him¬ 
self. He knew that Ellen was the answer, but 
did that justify his return? Ellen did not love 
him, so she had told him; he was alone; he 
was poor. And here was a girl whose gentle 
presence made his life a calm progression of 
happy days. Why should he abandon what was 
near and possible for this elusive, unformed 
vision of the future? 

He turned his face away and fought the words 
that would not be silenced. Her hand beside 
his knee crumpled the yellow leaves. He seized 
it and held it to his lips. “Alice, do you really 
care for me? Do you love me?” 

She looked at him gravely. “I don’t know,” 
she answered. 

He helped her to her feet. Suddenly he caught 
her in his arms and pressed her close to him. 
Her face was upturned to his, and for a long 


148 


HIGH HURDLES 


moment he felt the warmth of her lips against 
his own. The fragrance of her hair intoxicated 
him, the strength of her firm young body thrilled 
through him. 

Then he felt her hand against his chest, gently 
pushing him from her. His arms freed her. She 
dropped down on the leaves and covered her 
face with her hands. He crouched before her 
and lifted them from her face. 

“What’s the matter, Alice?” he pleaded. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” she murmured. “I don’t 
understand you when you’re like that.” 

“I couldn’t help it.” . . . 

In the weeks that followed, Dawson became 
an even more frequent visitor at the Hagen 
kitchen. He had sent away for a couple of 
books on South America, and read aloud from 
them to Alice. His presence relieved and yet 
sometimes annoyed Harry. “I shall leave here 
by the first of the year,” Dawson announced one 
evening. “I have got about all there is to get 
out of this mine work, and South America pulls 
me harder and harder. The firm I worked for as 
a draftsman when I first got out of college has a 
big job on the Amazon, and I’ve written to 
Brownell, my old boss. If he comes through 


HIGH HURDLES 149 

with something, I’ll take it. If he doesn’t, I 
shall go anyway and pick up something.” 

“I guess I’ll be about through myself by then,” 
Harry commented. “I’ve been dreading getting 
back to civilization, but it’s got to be done some 
day, and I think I’ve learned to see straight.” 

Alice watched their faces with troubled eyes. 

“Where are you going, Harry?” Dawson 
asked. 

“I don’t know.” 

That evening he wrote a long letter to Clar¬ 
ence. It was the first time he had written to any 
of his old friends, the first definite expression of 
his yearning to hear some news from the pleasant 
life that he had so stupidly cast aside. Then he 
wrote to Ellen. It was a straightforward letter 
telling of his life at Carbon. He ended with the 
hope that she had not wholly forgotten him and 
that she would be glad to see him should he 
return to Boston. 

It was two weeks before he heard from Clar¬ 
ence; the letter was long and rambling. He 
wrote that he had re-established himself in his 
class, without conditions. Herrick was actually 
achieving the honors he desired and he had be¬ 
come much set up over his scholarship. Then 


150 HIGH HURDLES 

came a few passages that Harry read again and 
again. 

“Your old flame, Ellen Davenport,” Clarence 
wrote, “is very gay, and the fellows are all rush¬ 
ing her. She has some job she works at and is 
quite stuck on herself about it, but she’s getting 
better-looking every day, and if you don’t come 
back you’ll find the barn door open and the 
bird flown.” Harry ignored the metaphor and 
skipped the next few paragraphs. “Speaking of 
E. D. again,” Clarence continued, “whatever 
happened to you and Arthur Clark? For a while 
they seemed to have some fight on about some¬ 
thing, and I thought it was on account of some 
row you had with Clark. But Clark is going 
strong now.” 

Well, what chance had he? Even if he should 
go back to Boston, how could he dare to ask 
Ellen to share his poverty? Yet against this 
feeling of hopelessness was the stronger urge of 
youthful optimism and confidence. For a week 
he pondered over the course he would pursue. 
And the end of the week still found him unde¬ 
termined. 

Meanwhile with Alice he had been drifting. 
If he were to marry her, he must choose a life 


HIGH HURDLES 


151 


that would be familiar to her; he could adapt 
himself better than she. But he did not want to 
bind himself. And on the far horizon he saw 
Ellen. 

One day he met Dawson in the mine. 

“I got my letter from Brownell,” Dawson 
said. “Says there’s a fine job for me on a big 
electric development they are starting at Rio.” 

“When are you going?” 

“There’s nothing doing until April. Takes a 
month to get down there. Looks like sticking it 
out at Carbon until March. Now I know I’ve 
got the chance, I’m itching to be off. How long 
do you plan to stay here?” 

“There’s nothing more for me here. In a 
month or so I’m going back to Chicago or Bos¬ 
ton to hunt a job.” 

“Seems to me,” Dawson commented, “it ought 
to be pretty soft for you to get set pretty with 
all the friends you’ve got.” 

“I thought so once.” 

“I want to see the world and hammer out a 
place for myself. I guess you’d rather settle 
down somewheres.” 

“Sometimes it’s harder to settle down than it 
is to wander.” 


152 


HIGH HURDLES 


Dawson turned the thought slowly. “Perhaps 
you’re right. Gosh, but I’d rot at a desk.” . . . 

A drizzling rain fell from a dull sky when 
Harry stepped off the man hoist. He flicked 
out the light of his pit cap and tramped heavily 
through shallow puddles to the cinder path that 
followed the straight line of the long street. 

John Hagen’s house looked tiny and squalid 
in the half light. He and Hagen would have 
supper in the small kitchen. Then Alice would 
wash the dishes; he could smell the steam of the 
soapy water. Later he would read for a while 
and then go to bed. And to-morrow the whistle 
would blow in the still darkness of dawn and 
another day would pass, and another, and 
another. 

After dinner he put on his hat and strode down 
the street to Pete’s. The phonograph was play¬ 
ing, the crowd lined the walls, the single electric 
light shone through the mist of tobacco smoke. 
He bought a bottle of beer and took a chair next 
to Plunkett. For almost the first time he realized 
his loss of real companionship; his craving for 
conversation about the world which he had 
known. He went home early. 

Plunkett was laid up with a sprained ankle, 


HIGH HURDLES 


153 


and the responsibility of the section fell entirely 
on Harry’s shoulders. This was nothing new; 
nevertheless he felt the increased burden, and 
for several nights he had remained in the mine 
for an hour after the day shift had gone to the 
top. 

By Wednesday the coal hoisted on the first 
two days had registered a record run. He was 
early at the mine, and as he waited for the man 
hoist he pressed his back against the wall of 
the hoisting engineer’s shanty and drank in the 
faint warmth of the thin yellow sunshine of the 
opening day. The sky was clear, a pale wintry 
blue, and shell ice sparkled in the puddles. 

As the hoist carried him swiftly down the 
black shaft'he mentally planned the long day 
ahead, and when he reached the bottom he 
struck off with a fast stride to the farthest work¬ 
ings. The even temperature of the mine, which 
remained constant regardless of changing sea¬ 
sons, seemed filled with agreeable warmth after 
the frosty sharpness of the outer world. For a 
few minutes he stopped in a heading where there 
had been a fall the day before. During the night 
the timbermen had braced the weakened roof. 
Twice he entered the rooms where the loader 


154 


HIGH HURDLES 


would later fill their empty cars from the pile of 
blasted coal at the headings, and tested for gas 
along the floor with his safety lamp. But the 
small flame within the wire gauze burned unaf¬ 
fected and told him that the air was pure. 

It was noon before his inspection was com¬ 
pleted. He stretched out on a pile of props for 
a brief rest before eating his lunch. Suddenly 
he sat up and sniffed. Then he studied the 
flame of his lamp, burning brightly where he 
had stuck it in the side of a prop. The air 
between him and the light was crystalline. Again 
he smelled it with a long inhalation. 

Faint, but definable, a sweet, pungent aroma 
tainted the air current. It was wood smoke. He 
seized his lamp and thrust it into the clip in his 
cap brim. The smell of smoke was no stronger, 
but its presence was unmistakable. 

More feared than any other disaster was a fire 
in the mine. 

As he ran forward the smell grew stronger, 
the heavy reek of burning pine. Far ahead of 
him a pin point of light bobbed in the blackness. 
Some one was coming. 



STRUGGLING WITH HIS AWKWARD BURDEN 











VI 


“Hey!” yelled the runner, his voice strained 
high with excitement. “Fire in six west! It’s 
in the brattice; the whole damn place has 
caught! I’ll telephone bottom!” He darted past 
on his way to the telephone. 

Harry broke into a run and did not halt until 
he came to a wide door which blocked the entry. 
The doorkeeper had evidently deserted his post. 
Harry pushed open the big panel. Then he 
understood. Like a soft fog, the smoke filled 
the entry; white and blinding, it poured, moving 
at right angles on the far side of the door. The 
smoke was moving in the wrong direction! It 
should be traveling with the air from left to 
right, away from the bottom of the mine. In a 
flash he understood. The fire, wherever it was, 
had burned away a brattice, and the air current, 
short-circuited, was moving in the opposite 
direction. 

Like a swimmer, he plunged into the white 
flood. His eyes smarted, and he coughed as he 
ran. Involuntarily he stopped and bent to the 


156 


HIGH HURDLES 


floor to catch a breath beneath the smoke. 
Denser and lower it rolled over him. It was 
useless to proceed. In the far distance he heard 
the dull roar of an electric locomotive. It was 
approaching him out of the smoke. He pressed 
back against the wall. A searchlight came sud¬ 
denly out of the haze, a yellow blur of light. As 
the locomotive passed he swung on the low step 
behind. The driver, unconscious, sprawled over 
the top, his fingers still clenched about the 
handle of the controller. 

As they reached the door in the side of the 
entry through which he had just come, Harry 
threw off the current and dragged the limp body 
from the seat. Struggling with his awkward 
burden, he opened the door — the clean air in 
the entry beyond gave him a momentary sense 
of relief. By now the man who had fled past him 
had warned the men at bottom. Water and a 
fire-fighting crew were doubtless already on the 
way. He must act quickly. If they could get 
behind the fire, away from the smoke, they could 
attack it. Approach from the front was impos¬ 
sible, for in addition to the smoke the current 
of air carried the deadly invisible gas generated 
by the flames. The man at his feet gave evidence 


HIGH HURDLES 


157 


of its effect. But his heart was still beating, and 
Harry knew that the fresh air would revive him. 
The man’s eyes opened; slowly he climbed to 
his feet. 

“Can you make it?” Harry asked. 

The man nodded. 

All the well-known short cuts recalled them¬ 
selves vividly. Back through black rooms and 
abandoned workings Harry ran, now and then 
stumbling over tracks or piles of coal or stone. 
In an entry parallel to the one where he had 
left the locomotive driver he again investigated 
the smoke-filled entry that crossed it. Beyond 
the brattice door the smoke was of impenetrable 
density, and blended with the pitchy odor of 
wood was the oily smell of burning coal. A 
current of hot air fanned his face. The fire must 
be near the junction of the next entry. 

Again he ran. Far up in the room ends men 
were working. He knew all the places. “Fire!” 
he yelled at them, “Go to bottom!” In the 
silence and peace of their working places they 
had been ignorant of the conflagration that was 
now raging but a quarter of a mile away behind 
the massive barriers of coal. 

Much time was lost, but he had warned all of 


158 


HIGH HURDLES 


the men in the section. By now the other section 
heads would have been notified and had time to 
start their men out of the mine. 

As Gray rushed out of a room mouth into the 
third entry a locomotive ground past him, the 
gong clanging loudly, the flat steel top black 
with men. Behind it came the water cars, big 
tanks of water on low-wheeled frames. He 
sprang on the rear coupling. Already the air 
was acrid with smoke. The locomotive stopped, 
and he ran forward. A hundred feet ahead was 
the brattice door, the third one that he had vis¬ 
ited — here the fire was. 

Through the chinks about the door frame the 
smoke curled white in the headlight of the loco¬ 
motive. Then he saw a pink light tinge the 
soft curl of smoke. A twisting tentacle of crim¬ 
son showed here and there around the door’s 
edges. The tentacles united into a rim of flame. 
Then the whole door burst with a gaseous puff 
into a panel of fire. There was a moment of still¬ 
ness in which he could hear the snapping and 
cracking of the dry wood. Then the door col¬ 
lapsed in a seething burst of sparks. A huge 
white curtain of smoke seemed to lift for a 
moment as the air current was diverted, and 


HIGH HURDLES 


159 


disclosed the walls of the cross entry, a glowing 
incandescent mass of ruddy flames. The coal 
walls of the entry were burning. The tunnel had 
become a mighty tube of heat and smoke. 
Slowly the smoke lowered; then, like a fog bank, 
the dense soft cloud began slowly and smoothly 
to advance down toward them, filling the entry 
with its dense white substance. 

“The gas! Run for your lives!” a voice 
shouted. 

Every man for himself, they climbed on board 
the locomotive and the water cars, and the driver 
reversed the trolley. The wheels rumbled, and 
the heavy train started backing the useless tanks 
of water toward the bottom. The fire was be¬ 
yond control. 

At the bottom men moved hurriedly in the 
bright glare of the electric lights. The telephones 
were in constant communication. Men were 
counted as they boarded the hoists. Orders were 
given, and little groups disappeared on their 
execution. On an incoming locomotive were four 
limp bodies. The deadly white damp was flood¬ 
ing the workings. 

The air grew still and warmer. At the top of 
the air shaft the great fan had been slowed down 


160 


HIGH HURDLES 


to reduce the air velocity which had fanned the 
flames and carried them on its current. 

His face blackened and his eyes red with 
smoke, Colby, the mine manager, seemed to be 
everywhere. “Everybody get out!” he shouted. 
“We’re going to cut off the fans and close the 
shaft.” 

Up and down, up and down, the man hoist 
traveled, and with each trip the group of men at 
the bottom became smaller. Two gangs were 
still in the workings, where they had gone to 
strategic points to try to block off the burning 
area. They appeared, defeated, their grimy faces 
gleaming with sweat, eloquent of their battle 
with this monster of heat and stupefying vapor. 

The last hoist was ready. With Colby and 
half a dozen others Harry stepped on board. 
Already the smell of smoke was strong in the 
quiet air. The hoist shot upward. The air grew 
colder and colder. Then the movement slowed 
abruptly and a flood of dazzling sunshine flared 
in their strained eyes. 

It was night before the shaft mouths were 
closed. Harry walked slowly up the long street. 
In the crystalline depth of the sky stars shone 
like flashing jewels. Some one was standing 


HIGH HURDLES 161 

motionless inside the Hagen gate. It was Alice. 
“I was scared for you,” she said simply. 

For a moment they stood silent. 

“I am going. It’s all over for weeks now, per¬ 
haps months.” 

“You’re going? Now?” 

“I guess I’ll take the late train out of Dalney; 
drive over to catch it. Perhaps we may not see 
each other soon.” 

She faced him, her face white in the moon¬ 
light. With infinite tenderness he bent over her 
and kissed her cheek. It was cold with the night 
and moist with sudden tears. 

Wildly she flung her arms about him. He 
disengaged her gently. 

Like a man stunned, he stumbled up the path. 
Through the thin door of his room he could 
hear her softly crying. Then he heard her 
step and the sound of her door close behind her. 
Automatically he stripped the little room of his 
possessions and packed his hand bags. . . . 

Almost a year had slipped by since that gray 
morning when Harry had first set foot in Chi¬ 
cago. In Carbon, in the velvet night of the mine, 
in the silent danger of his daily work, in the rude 
companionships, new forces had exerted power- 


162 


HIGH HURDLES 


ful influences upon him. He had become phys¬ 
ically strong and with bodily strength had come 
a mental clarity. Then had come his own self- 
analysis; he saw fairly his failures, he estimated 
his potentialities; he knew himself. 

His train reached Chicago early in the morn¬ 
ing, and as he drew on his shoes he smiled; for 
the first time in a year the gleam of polish 
glossed the leather. From the station he walked 
to a small hotel to which he had been directed 
by a fellow traveler. On the way to the hotel 
he ate breakfast in a lunchroom, and the plain, 
inexpensive food tasted good to him. 

Now, sitting on the edge of the iron bed, he 
drew long fragrant breaths from his pipe with 
evident pleasure. For the moment he was phys¬ 
ically content; he was at peace with his world. 

Then he began to survey his future. His 
small savings would not carry him long in idle¬ 
ness. He put on his hat and overcoat. He would 
call on Carleton. It was only proper that he 
should inform him of his leaving Carbon, and, 
moreover, Carleton was the only person he knew 
in Chicago. 

Outside, the sharp air invigorated him. There 
was no snow, and the dry pavements were filled 


HIGH HURDLES 


163 


with moving traffic. With long strides, he fol¬ 
lowed the sidewalk for several blocks to Michi¬ 
gan Avenue. In a glass he caught his reflection. 
It momentarily shocked him; then he smiled. 
He was shabby, and he was unashamed. . . . 

The girl in Carleton’s office asked him to wait, 
and it was fifteen minutes before he was ushered 
down the long hall and into the big paneled 
room. Carleton greeted him with the same cor¬ 
diality and direct simplicity that Harry remem¬ 
bered; but there were lines on the thin, dark 
face, and as he spoke he fingered nervously the 
pens and clips on the desk top. 

“I’ve been talking long-distance with Colby. 
Now let me have some first-hand stuff about the 
fire.” 

With businesslike simplicity Harry narrated 
the details of the disaster and the condition of 
the mine when he had last seen it. 

“Colby says it’s a question of three or four 
months before we can open up again.” 

Harry met the implied question. “When I left 
yesterday, I wrote a note to Colby and told 
him I was leaving.” 

“Have you a position?” Carleton asked. “Do 
you know what you are going to do?” 


164 


HIGH HURDLES 


“No, but I think I can line up something.” 

There was a brief pause. 

“Wouldn’t you like a card to a club?” Carle- 
ton asked. 

“No, thanks; I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able 
to use it right now.” 

“Well, call me up some noon and lunch with 
me.” The older man held out his hand and his 
eyes demanded assent. 

“I shall be glad to. You’ve done more for me 
than you realize.” 

On the street corner Harry bought a couple 
of newspapers and walked back to the hotel. In 
his room he turned to the Help Wanted adver¬ 
tisements. A bewildering variety of employment 
offered, but he checked only here and there with 
his pencil. Carefully he copied the five or six 
names and addresses that he had selected, and 
set out. 

That night he lay for an hour sleepless, turn¬ 
ing in his mind the experiences of the day. His 
feet were lame from tramping the hard side¬ 
walks. He was tired and nervously on tension 
from the strain of his fruitless interviews. 

The next day dawned raw and gray; dun 
clouds pressed low over the city; the streets 


HIGH HURDLES 


165 


were sloppy with the slush of the night’s snow¬ 
fall. He bought the morning paper and turned 
hurriedly past the world news to the close- 
packed page that might afford his opportunity. 
There were four new listings that offered prom¬ 
ise, so he hurried through his breakfast in order 
that no other applicant might precede him. . . . 

“When do you want to start?” Harry’s ques¬ 
tioner was a man of middle age with gray streaks 
in his smooth-brushed hair and shiny spots on 
the elbows and cuffs of his well-brushed blue 
serge suit. 

Harry faced him squarely. “I’m ready now,” 
he said. 

“You can report at eight to-morrow.” 

Across the street from the high windows of 
the offices of the Northern Railroad a lofty office 
building blocked the sky. In the scant light of 
day electric lights cast long shadows across the 
cluttered desk tops and challenged the gray light 
that seemed to halt with the outer air at the 
misted glass of the windows. 

Like a military formation, the desks filled the 
great room, and over these desks, hour after 
hour, flowed the records of a railroad’s com¬ 
merce: the freight of cities and the produce of 


166 


HIGH HURDLES 


far-flung acres, the mighty movement of a 
nation’s industry. The hours were long and the 
work monotonous. After Harry’s life of physical 
activity this slavery in the close and vitiated air 
made him feel like a caged animal. He awaited 
with anticipation the brief noon hour when he 
could stand on the sidewalk and drink in the 
cold air. And the thoughts of the afternoon all 
terminated with the long, fast walk to his board¬ 
ing house. 

Not even during his first weeks at Carbon had 
he led a more solitary existence. 

In the third house beyond the factory Harry 
had found a room that met with the require¬ 
ments of his meager income. Beyond the elabo¬ 
rate front door, with its inset stained glass, two 
flights of stairs led through gloomy halls to the 
third floor. Dim gas lights accentuated the 
darkness and enabled him barely to recognize 
the other lodgers. Faint smells of cooking occa¬ 
sionally hung in the musty air of the hallway, 
and once from his landlady’s quarters on the 
ground floor he heard the sound of a piano, 
hushed and distant. 

One noon hour he went out to lunch with a 
man who worked at the desk immediately be- 


HIGH HURDLES 


167 


hind his own. His name was Dave Hennessey, 
and Harry had been attracted to him by his 
quiet manner and particularly by the fine phy¬ 
sique that showed itself beneath the cheap 
ready-made suit. Hennessey, he learned, be¬ 
longed to an athletic club and boxed there three 
evenings a week. The idea appealed to Harry. 
It suggested exercise and companionship. Gladly 
he accepted Hennessey’s invitation to go there 
with him that evening. 

The Elite Athletic Club occupied a bare room 
in an old loft building. A few exercising 
machines lined the walls. There was a table 
with tern files of the “Police Gazette” and sport¬ 
ing journals for the literary, and under a frame 
of lights in the center of the room was the ring 
where the fast patter of rubber-shod feet and the 
flick of gloved fist against white flesh announced 
the training of new champions. 

That evening Harry put on the gloves with 
Hennessey, and for a fast half hour he pitted his 
strength and natural quickness against the 
steady science of his opponent. Then for another 
half hour Hennessey coached him, repeating 
again and again a particular blow and the 
counter until Harry had mastered it. After an 


168 


HIGH HURDLES 


icy shower he pulled on his clothes. He had 
never felt better. 

The next day he wrote a note to Carleton 
and told him of his job with the Northern. He 
did not give the address of his boarding house, 
but he knew that Carleton would some day seek 
him out and draw him into his own world. 
Sooner even than he anticipated came the 
summons. 

It was two days later that he was called to the 
telephone, and before Harry realized what he 
was doing he had agreed to dine at Carleton’s 
house that Saturday evening. It was just a small 
dinner, the older man explained, and he said 
something about some other young Harvard men 
whom Harry would meet there. 

As Harry hung up the receiver he realized 
with dismay that he had no clothes for such an 
occasion. At noon the next day he ate a sand¬ 
wich and then hurried to a men’s clothing store 
on State Street. From his slim reserve he had 
taken a sum sufficient for his purchases. That 
evening he dressed himself carefully as for a 
rehearsal. As he glanced at himself in the small 
glass over his bureau he realized that the result 
was satisfactory. 


HIGH HURDLES 


169 


On Friday night he boxed again with Hennes¬ 
sey at the Elite. He was improving, and the 
science of the sport appealed to him. Hennessey 
was a good example of a first-class amateur, but 
already Harry was beginning to be able occasion¬ 
ally to take the offensive. He was strong and 
possessed a catlike agility; his reach, too, was 
superior to his opponent’s, and his eye, trained 
by the blackness of the mine, was quick and 
accurate. A half dozen loungers looked on with 
languid interest, among them Abie Cohen, the 
club’s trainer, a small apelike man who had at 
one time held local honors in the prize ring. 

With the confidence of superior skill, Hennes¬ 
sey feinted and as Harry raised his left arm to 
guard he gave a quick jab at the stomach 
beneath Harry’s raised arms. The blow was 
hard and straight. For a second Harry stopped, 
a desire to double forward almost overpowering 
him. Hennessey’s face seemed thrust into his 
own. There was a grin on the thin lips. 

Like a flash, Harry swung forward. His left 
fist struck clean. That was a blow Hennessey 
himself had taught him. He saw a trickle of red 
drop suddenly from the bruised nostril. Again 
his fist scored, hard on the out-thrust jaw; that 


170 


HIGH HURDLES 


was another blow that he had studied. He was 
playing the game with his head as well as his 
hands. 

Hennessey had crumpled on the floor and a 
couple of the onlookers were throwing water in 
the upturned face. Abie fluttered at Harry’s 
elbow. “Say! Say! Say!” he was vociferating. 
“You got it in you, kid!” 

With a dazed expression Hennessey opened 
his eyes and sat up on the floor. Then he smiled 
broadly. “I guess you’d better get a new 
teacher,” he commented. “I’m through instruct¬ 
ing you.” 

It was exactly half past seven on Saturday 
evening when Harry pressed the bell at Carle- 
ton’s door. Through the wrought-iron grill and 
the plate glass he saw a square vestibule of 
smooth gray stone. Then the butler came down 
a pair of low steps from a door beyond, and 
Harry entered. 

Carleton greeted him in the library. He was 
standing with his back to the fire, his tall, thin 
figure accentuated by his evening clothes. Harry 
surveyed the room. Bookcases and carved panels 
of dark wood lined the walls and against the 
panels were a few simply framed etchings. His 


HIGH HURDLES 


171 


feet moved silently in the deep dark carpet. The 
warm stillness of the room almost oppressed him. 

In the next ten minutes the others joined 
them, perhaps a dozen in all. The fragment of 
toast and caviar that the butler placed before 
him recalled other dinners he had attended. It 
seemed twenty years ago. 

He spoke to Mrs. Carleton, a slender woman 
with pretty teeth, and a streak of premature 
gray in her black hair. 

“I can’t tell you what it means to me to have 
an evening like this,” he said. 

“My husband has had a great deal to say 
about you,” she answered. “He liked the way 
you stood by your job at Carbon.” 

On his right at dinner a young woman with 
gleaming white arms and shoulders was telling 
him of a dance that was to be given a few weeks 
later. With frank interest he watched her. 

“Jack, over there, says you’ve been a miner; 
why don’t you come in your miner’s costume? 
It’s to be a fancy dress, you know.” 

Harry tried to explain that miners do not wear 
a costume, just overalls and old clothes, soiled 
and torn. He felt a curious resentment at the 
suggestion. Those clothes had been his uniform; 


172 


HIGH HURDLES 


in them he had dared death; in them he had 
found salvation for his soul. He could not flaunt 
these things. 

She acquiesced amiably. “But you’ll come 
to another dance that is being given by some 
friends of mine. I’ll ask for an invitation for 
you. Now, you must write your address, here, 
on this card.” 

Harry smiled as he wrote the street and num¬ 
ber of the West Side boarding house on the bit 
of pasteboard. 

“And, of course, you’ll dine with us before,” 
she said. 

A white-wrapped bottle slanted past his shoul¬ 
der and amber liquid sparkled and bubbled in 
the heavy champagne glass. He drank eagerly 
but slowly. That, too, recalled the past. 

Across the table a thin-faced man with eye¬ 
glasses was speaking with emphasis: “There is 
no such thing as American architecture. Yes, 
possibly the so-called Colonial for the simpler 
types of cottages and small buildings. But you 
must turn to the established periods if —” 

The auburn head again bent toward Harry. 
“That’s Billy Graylear,” she explained. “He has 
lived abroad, I don’t know how many years. He 


HIGH HURDLES 173 

was at the Beaux Arts, and he designs all the 
big houses here.” 

A heavy, gray-haired man a few places from 
Graylear broke into the conversation: “That’s 
all right for your country houses, William, but 
Chicago’s a business town, remember that.” 

On Harry’s left a plump woman of forty flung 
to him infrequent polite sentences. Beside her a 
man with tired eyes listened patiently. “I 
repeat,” she explained, “the old adage is true, 
woman’s place is in the home.” 

The girl on Harry’s right again leaned toward 
him. “That’s Mrs. Henderson,” she explained. 
“She was a rabid anti and a wonderful speaker. 
The man she is talking to is one of the big men 
on the Board of Trade. He’s made several for¬ 
tunes in wheat in the past two years.” 

Harry took a cigarette from the tray at 
his elbow. The girl beside him had already 
lighted one. 

“I think I’ll have to take you under my 
wing.” She blew a sudden light cloud and laid 
down her cigarette. “My husband is abroad,” 
she continued, “and when one is as much alone 
as I am it’s very nice to have some one to look 
after.” 


174 


HIGH HURDLES 


For a moment her mention of her husband 
annoyed Harry. He had not caught her name 
in their casual introduction. 

“You must be very lonely,” she said. “It is 
always hard to be in a strange city. You will let 
me help you, won’t you?” 

What a wonderful thing it must be, he 
thought, to be married to a woman so beautiful. 
The man must be a fool to let business take 
him away from her. He looked squarely at her. 
“Your husband is a very lucky man,” he said 
bluntly. 

“To be in Europe?” she laughed. 

“That’s an unkind way of turning a sincere 
remark,” he answered. 

Dinner over, they returned to the library, 
where Harry and the girl who had sat at his right 
continued their conversation. Life had suddenly 
become surcharged with peace and plenty. To¬ 
morrow he would awaken to the drab dawn of 
the tiny West Side bedroom. But to-night he 
was again Harry Gray, the Harry Gray of his 
inheritance. 

“You know, I really don’t think I caught 
your name when we were introduced,” he said 
abruptly. 


HIGH HURDLES 175 

“Wheatley, Beatrice Wheatley, Mrs. Charles 
Gales Wheatley.” 

“You have been very good to me,” he said. 

“Jack tells me you have just come to Chicago. 
You have had a pretty stiff year, I fancy. Just 
what are you doing now?” 

She listened gravely as he told her of his work 
and its tedium, but when he narrated the inci¬ 
dents of his evenings at the athletic club he saw 
her lips part with interest. 

“You box there three times a week?” she 
repeated. “It’s bully! I can’t help but adore a 
man who has physical strength.” 

Her small pointed foot beat emphasis to her 
words and he admired the slim ankle and the 
rounded instep above the edge of the black satin 
slipper. 

The coffee cups were taken away and the card 
tables appeared. 

“Some bridge?” she asked. 

“I would rather not, unless I am needed,” 
Harry answered. “I haven’t played in a long 
while, and somehow, to-night, I want to have 
nothing to distract me from all this. You don’t 
understand, of course, but I’m sort of taking a 
vacation to-night. To-morrow I go back again.” 


176 


HIGH HURDLES 


Their talk wandered. Mutual acquaintances 
were discovered. Then he spoke of Carbon, and 
in brief sentences told her of his life in the mine. 
But in all his narrative he failed to mention 
Ellen or Alice. Several times he was conscious 
of his avoidance. 

Through a white veil of cigarette smoke 
Beatrice Wheatley watched him, and when he 
finally got up to leave she stood for a moment 
beside him and looked up at him. With a sense 
of surprise he realized how small she was — the 
crown of her golden head hardly reached to his 
shoulder — and resisted an abrupt impulse to 
embrace her, as he would a child. 

He was glad that she accepted without ques¬ 
tion his refusal to be driven to his lodgings. For 
a moment her warm hand rested in his. In the 
darkness of her limousine he saw her face white 
in the light of a corner arc light. Then he closed 
the door and the machine moved off from the 
curb. 

Above, a thick sky pressed down upon the 
city. A raw, cold wind swept in from the lake. 
Slowly he walked to the nearest car line. His 
recreation was over. He must return to the chill 
room of his boarding house, the overheated office, 


HIGH HURDLES 


177 


and the club where he boxed with Hennessey. 
But far away, a bright light beyond the immedi¬ 
ate gloom, was the evening when he would again 
mingle with his own people. And on that night 
he would again see Beatrice Wheatley. 


VII 


It was almost noon before Harry got out of his 
bed the following morning. It was raining, and 
a steady stream of water splashed on the cornice 
outside his window from a broken spout. The 
room was damp and cold. From the register a 
thin current of air emanated, faintly warm and 
scented with coal gas. He opened the door to 
draw some heat from the hall, and climbed back 
into bed. 

In a daydream he reviewed the past evening. 
How different it all was! He recalled vividly the 
great stone house, the faultlessly served dinner, 
the wines, the conversation, and the woman who 
had sat beside him. She had put herself out to 
be gracious to him. He had been flattered by her 
interest. 

As he looked at the gray, cracked plaster 
above him, he wondered how soon he might 
accept Beatrice Wheatley’s invitation to call. 
There had been an ingenuous informality in her 
manner. He found himself recalling the beauty 
of her slight body, the poise of the small aristo- 


HIGH HURDLES 


179 


cratic head with its hair of flaming gold, and the 
curious little catch of hesitation in her voice. 
Abruptly he forced his thoughts into other chan¬ 
nels. It frightened him a little that he had been 
so susceptible. Possibly the champagne had 
heightened his appreciation. 

The days following the dinner at the Carle- 
tons went by with a rapidity that surprised him. 
He did not care particularly for his work, but 
it filled the hours. It was at least a start. 

A week or so later Carleton again called him 
on the telephone. Could Harry lunch with him 
that noon at the University Club? 

Across the table Carleton faced him, good- 
looking, alert, and affable. It was a pleasant 
contrast to the customary lunch-counter repast. 
Carleton was interested in something; his ques¬ 
tions were thrown out with more than passing 
curiosity. 

“You are happy at your work?” he asked. 
“You feel that this is the thing you want to do?” 

Harry’s answer was prompt. That was a ques¬ 
tion he too had been pondering. “No, I don’t 
think it is,” he answered. “At Carbon I got my 
feet under me. Now I have to do the same sort 
of thing again. I must prove to myself and 


180 


HIGH HURDLES 


others that I can succeed. I think I can do that 
with this work in time, and I can live meanwhile, 
but there may be other work that would give me 
a better chance to get ahead faster.” 

“I’ve been watching you with a lot of interest, 
Gray.” Carleton’s voice was friendly. “You are 
a very different fellow to-day from the Gray I 
first saw a year or so ago. I liked the way you 
took hold of things at Carbon, and I liked the 
way you went out here and got a place for 
yourself.” 

“I have you to thank for a lot of it,” Harry 
answered. 

“Well, I’m going to make another suggestion. 
Ever since you arrived in Chicago I’ve had my 
eye out for something for you to do, something 
that might bring you in a little better income 
and give you a chance to get ahead more quickly. 
I believe you told me you had a certain am¬ 
bition?” 

Harry blushed consciously. “Yes. I can’t do 
much about it, though, until I have something 
behind me. There was a time when money was 
the last thing that concerned me. Now it seems 
to be about the first.” 

“Some friends of mine in the East,” Carleton 


HIGH HURDLES 


181 


continued, “opened a branch out here about a 
year ago. They have done mighty well with it, 
so well, in fact, that they are looking for a bright 
young man or two to jump into their selling end. 
Jim Fish, who is out here temporarily and is a 
member of the firm, dined with me the other 
night. I talked to him a little about you. They 
sell fabrics. Have some big mills in Massa¬ 
chusetts. I think there’s a place for you with 
them if you want it. And if you make good you 
might end up in Boston yet.” 

Harry’s eyes betrayed his excitement. “Do 
you really mean there’s a job actually open?” 
he demanded. 

“That’s what I’m trying to convey to you. 
Better go round to-morrow noon and talk with 
Fish yourself.” 

That evening Harry wrote a long letter to 
Uncle Bill Holman. For many months his pride 
had held him from apologizing to the older man 
for his conduct that bitter morning when he had 
spurned his interest and scorned his counsel. 
Simply and tersely he recounted the results of 
his activities since he had left Boston. He re¬ 
gretted the opinion that Holman must have held 
of him. He believed that now he was seeing life 


182 


HIGH HURDLES 


fairly and squarely. He was grateful to Holman 
for the time and labor he was giving to his 
father’s affairs. From Holman’s brief letters the 
inheritance seemed to be liabilities rather than 
assets. 

When he had finished the letter he wrote to 
Ellen. He tried to convey simply and moder¬ 
ately his realization of how he must have 
appeared to her. His self-analysis was honest 
and without reservation. He tried to explain his 
new viewpoint. He closed the letter with a 
request that he might see her again. 

As he sealed the envelope, doubt again 
troubled him. Did he know Ellen Davenport 
any more than she knew him? For years he had 
idolized her. He wondered how he would find 
her now. Would the old appeal still be there? 

A few days later he tendered his resignation 
to the Northern Railroad. A couple of years 
ago he would probably have considered address¬ 
ing a written communication to an officer of the 
company. Now he walked over to the desk of 
the man who had hired him. “Chief, I’m going 
to quit.” 

The gray head did not lift from the pile of 
papers on the desk. “When?” 


HIGH HURDLES 


183 


“Saturday. If that's all right." 

“Suppose you’ve got something that looks 
better?" 

“I hope so. I’m much obliged to you for 
giving me a chance here, anyway." 

The gray head looked up. “Good luck. Sorry 
you’re going." . . . 

Harry’s talk with Jim Fish was highly satis¬ 
factory. He liked the man, and the work prom¬ 
ised from the start considerably more than he 
had expected. 

“I won’t hold out any promise," Fish told 
him, “but if you deliver there’s a real oppor¬ 
tunity for you." 

Hennessey learned of the change with evident 
regret. “I suppose you’ll quit boxing now," he 
commented. “Some of the fellows have been 
talking about asking you to represent the club 
in a bout with a guy in Waukegan. You could 
do it; we all think you’ve got the stuff in you." 

Later, when he thought over what Hennessey 
had said, the implied confidence thrilled him. 
That, after all, was making the team. The cold, 
bare, room of the Elite Athletic Club, with its 
fringe of ringside faces, was very different from 
the Stadium with spectators piled by thousands 


184 


HIGH HURDLES 


skyward from the grass plot. And yet it was 
the same thing. It gave him a feeling of 
exaltation. 

The new work was interesting and varied, and 
the hours were shorter. He liked the people with 
whom he was thrown. He enjoyed the light and 
quiet of the pleasant offices. 

A week later he abandoned his boarding place 
and moved to a similar room, but more agree¬ 
ably located on the north side of the city. The 
location was even more accessible to the office, 
and, moreover, most of the people he was meet¬ 
ing lived in that part of town. 

The first night he walked around to the 
Wheatleys’. It was a small, three-story resi¬ 
dence, with a smart fagade of brick and lime¬ 
stone. He glanced about him with frank interest. 
Beatrice Wheatley interested him, appealed to 
him. He wondered what her husband was like. 
She had no children; she had told him that, and 
she had told him also that she was much alone. 
He did not regret her husband’s absence; he had 
a feeling that he would not like him. 

She came into the room as he thought of these 
things. Her hand rested in his for a brief 
moment. 


HIGH HURDLES 


185 


“This is nice of you,” she was saying. “I 
thought perhaps you had forgotten me, and that 
all your pleasant promises that you would come 
and see me were never to materialize.” The 
elusive, lisping catch in her voice fascinated him. 
“You are coming here for dinner two weeks from 
Saturday? It isn’t going to be a fancy-dress 
thing, after all, so I won’t insist on your wearing 
your miner’s clothes.” 

“I hope no hesitation sounded in my accept¬ 
ance the other night,” he answered. “I have 
been looking forward to it ever since. You prob¬ 
ably don’t realize what it means to go to dinner 
parties and dances and all that sort of thing 
again after you have been in exile.” 

“Now that you are living so near,” she com¬ 
manded, “you must come here often.” 

She watched him through her long lashes. He 
could not guess her thoughts, but her positive 
personality at the same time disquieted him and 
interested him. He wondered how old she was; 
how long she had been married. 

For an hour they talked. With complete in¬ 
difference he realized that he was confiding in 
her, piece by piece, the narrative of his life and 
all the bitterness of his failures. All, in fact, 


186 


HIGH HURDLES 


except one — Ellen’s name had not been men¬ 
tioned. That was something of which he did not 
care to speak. He spoke of Alice, wholesomely, 
and of what her sympathy and gentleness had 
meant to him. 

Beatrice Wheatley smiled with understanding. 
“You probably were fortunate to end your 
experience there when you did,” she said. “We 
shall have to find some charming girl here for 
you.” 

He tried to answer her with a pretty compli¬ 
ment— said that he would be satisfied if he 
might call on her occasionally, but he became 
involved and confused. His words seemed com¬ 
monplace and forced. He felt the color flush his 
face. 

Gracefully she led him out of troubled waters. 
“I think we shall be splendid friends. I look 
forward to having you meet my husband.” 

It was a very natural remark, but he flashed 
a glance at her. She had said it to free him of 
his embarrassment, to relieve the situation. In 
a distant part of the house low chimes sounded 
cheerily, then slowly a deep, hollow note struck 
ten. He got up to leave. “It’s been bully this 
evening.” He spoke with spontaneous enthu¬ 
siasm. 


HIGH HURDLES 


187 


“You will come again soon?” she pleaded. “I 
am so much alone now, and it’s delightful to 
have such a pleasant evening.” . . . 

The night was clear, and the damp breeze 
from the lake was cool and bracing. Harry’s 
heels rang with metallic resonance on the side¬ 
walk. It had been a delightful evening, he told 
himself. She was a charming woman, more like 
a splendid girl than a woman. And yet even he, 
in his ingenuousness, sensed an indefinable some¬ 
thing beyond the frank abandon of youth. It 
was an aspect that he did not understand; it 
puzzled him, and for some incomprehensible rea¬ 
son disturbed him. Still, that too was a part of 
her charm. It was a characteristic he had 
observed in no other woman. It enticed him. 

A gas light burned low in the hall. On the 
white marble top of the old-fashioned hatrack 
a few letters were strewn. In the dim light he 
saw his name on one of the envelopes in large, 
unformed writing. He picked it up and tried to 
think who the writer might be. Then he looked 
at the postmark. It was stamped Carbon, and 
he knew it must be from Alice Hagen. He 
stuffed the letter into his pocket and went up to 
his room. The hall was hot and close, the 


188 


HIGH HURDLES 


unaired smell of an old house thickly tenanted. 
His door closed, he opened the window. The 
fresh night seemed like a stimulant. 

He sat down on the bed and tore open the 
envelope. It contained a single sheet of ruled • 
paper, but both sides were closely covered with 
writing. Twice he read it from beginning to 
end. The expression was as awkward as the 
writing, but the purport was clear, and it was 
characterized by a childish simplicity. 

The mine would probably remain sealed for 
a number of months, she wrote. Most of the 
men had already left for other fields. Of course 
neither her father nor Sam Dawson was needed, 
and her father had determined to move to East 
St. Louis, and keep some sort of store. She 
hated the prospect. The evening before Dawson 
had shown her a letter. His chance in South 
America had come. He was going at once. He 
had asked her to marry him and go with him. 
Here two words were obliterated. Evidently she 
had hesitated how to express the next paragraph. 
Then she continued. She had accepted his pro¬ 
posal. They were to be married at once. She 
thought she loved Sam, and she was certain of 
his love. She signed herself “affectionately/’ and 
misspelled the word. That was all. 


HIGH HURDLES 


189 


Harry crushed the letter in his hand and 
leaned his elbows on the window sill. So that 
was over. It had never been possible; it never 
could have been. He realized that. But for the 
moment the bottom seemed to drop out of 
things. In a boyish way he had cared for her, 
and he knew that there had been a time when 
she would have married him. Dawson was a 
fine, clean chap; he would make a good husband, 
and they would be happy. It was all for the 
best. 

Once again he read the letter. He saw the 
cheap ruled paper, the angular, awkward writ¬ 
ing, the misspelled words. In the bureau drawer 
was a brief, informal note from Beatrice Wheat- 
ley inviting him to dine at her house. He took 
it out and reread the friendly, perfectly ex¬ 
pressed sentences. The crisp white paper was 
embossed with a small white monogram; the 
writing was sure and certain. 

A few days later he met Carleton on the 
street. It was late in the afternoon, and both 
were walking home after a strenuous day. Carle- 
ton was pleasantly communicative. It seemed 
to Harry a favorable occasion to satisfy his curi¬ 
osity about Beatrice Wheatley. He had been 


190 


HIGH HURDLES 


again with her the evening before, another 
delightfully intimate evening before the fire. 

“What sort of a chap is Wheatley?” he asked. 
Carleton had just mentioned Beatrice, and the 
question fell naturally. 

“Well, frankly, I think he’s a poor lot. Both 
of them had a pot of money — too much — and 
they staged a sort of elopement, and he’s done 
nothing since. He came from the South some¬ 
where and was fussing around with some kind 
of business here. Then he met Beatrice.” 

“What is he doing in Europe?” 

Carleton answered the question with a laugh: 
“Why, that’s a little hard to explain. He’s been 
rather a problem to Beatrice, and she to him, 
for that matter. Charley has been getting to be 
a pretty systematic patron of the vintner, even 
more so since they were married. He got going 
it pretty strong, and I guess they had some sort 
of a blowup. Oh, nothing decisive. But he left 
in a huff, and most of us, Beatrice’s friends, 
would just as soon he stays where he is.” 

“She mentioned him to me and spoke very 
nicely of him.” 

“She would. But in her way she’s as volatile 
as Charley. He should have married another 


HIGH HURDLES 191 

type of woman, and she’d be a lot happier with 
another kind of man.” . . . 

Time passed on rapid wings. Each day, it 
seemed, Harry met new and pleasant people. 
With increasing frequency he was invited to 
dine. He was struck with the cordial hospitality 
of the great city; it contrasted sharply with his 
first impression of cold commercialism. It was a 
vital, stirring atmosphere in which he found him¬ 
self. By day, in the crowded canons of the Loop, 
the air seemed surcharged with untiring energy. 
Business was the great and absorbing activity; 
the stimulant entered his blood; it exhilarated 
him. 

Once or twice a week he went back to the 
dingy room of the West Side Athletic Club, at 
the end of the afternoon, and boxed for an hour. 
In the press of his business and social life he 
felt the need for occasional hard exercise, but it 
seemed to become more and more difficult for 
him to find time. He was sweeping along in the 
flood of a resistless current. 

Ten days had passed since he wrote to Ellen. 
For four or five days he looked for her answer 
to his letter, but no envelope addressed in her 
even hand awaited him on his return in the eve- 


192 


HIGH HURDLES 


ning. In the optimism which his new work 
inspired he saw for the first time a day in the 
not too distant future when it might be possible 
to consummate his long-cherished dreams. Even 
now he felt justified in asking her to marry him. 
In this city of youthful achievement it could not 
be long before he would be in a position to pro¬ 
vide the simple necessities of married life. The 
thought thrilled him. He found himself wonder¬ 
ing how it would be to return in the evening to 
the small apartment and find her waiting for 
him. Gradually life would broaden. The future 
teemed with countless happy episodes. His day¬ 
dreams engrossed him. 

Her letter came on Friday evening. He read 
it under the hall light; then he went up to his 
room and sat in the darkness trying to think. 
The letter was long and closely written. She 
felt that he deserved a full explanation, she 
wrote; their old relationship required her to be 
candid; it was hard to do, but it was only fair 
to him. 

He got up, lit the light, and reread it. His 
estimate of himself and the opinion he had cre¬ 
ated in her mind had been correct. She had 
cared for him once, and it was a sentiment that 


HIGH HURDLES 


193 


she hoped ever to remember — a warm portrait 
in her gallery of the past. Then she had felt a 
change in him. His point of view had offended 
her. She realized, she admitted, that he had 
done the right thing in casting off every influence 
of his old environment and establishing his true 
valuation amid new associations. There had 
been a time when she cared for him; then there 
had been a time when she wanted to care for 
him, but could not. Now she knew that it could 
never be. They would always be friends — that 
was all. 

But it was not all. The last page carried the 
blow that had sent him groping up the dim stair¬ 
case to sit silent in the darkness of his room. 
Arthur Clark had proposed to her. He was 
taking a three-year course and would graduate 
in June. She intended to accept him. 

For hours after he went to bed Harry shifted 
back and forth on the hot and crumpled pillow. 
Then the vigorous health of his young body 
asserted itself and he slept. When he awoke it 
was seven o’clock. 

With a grunt of relief he nestled his head back 
into the pillow. It was Saturday, a half day of 
interesting work at the office, and then a holiday 


194 


HIGH HURDLES 


until Monday. He recollected that it was to¬ 
night that he was going to Beatrice Wheatley’s 
dinner party before somebody or other’s dance 
at the Blackstone. 

Then his eyes opened wide and he lay staring 
at the ceiling, thinking of Ellen’s letter. His 
work, his future — what did they mean now? 
The motive for striving was gone. The goal was 
denied. 

It was not unnatural that he thought of Bea¬ 
trice Wheatley. She would understand; she 
would give him the tenderness and sympathy 
that he required. She too, he felt, carried her 
own cross. Then his better instinct came to the 
fore. This was his own secret. He had lost; it 
was up to him to prove himself a good loser, at 
least a silent one. 

Harry had become a frequent visitor at the 
Wheatleys’ house. Even more than John Carle- 
ton’s house, it had become a home to him. In 
the atmosphere with which Beatrice Wheatley 
surrounded herself he found something at once 
sympathetic and agreeable. All afternoon he 
tramped doggedly through Lincoln Park along 
the lake front up to the end of the Esplanade 
on Sheridan Road, and then back to the out- 


HIGH HURDLES 


195 


swing of Streeterville. He was healthily tired, 
quieted by his exertion and invigorated by the 
wind from the lake. 

At the Wheatleys’ a small fire was burning on 
the hearth when he was ushered in. He watched 
it, his thoughts tangled in a maze. Then he be¬ 
came conscious of a voice, very clear and low, 
calling to him from the top of the stairs. It was 
Beatrice Wheatley. 

“Awfully nice of you to get here before the 
rest,” he heard her saying. “We can go into the 
library and have a nice chat all by ourselves.” 

The library was in the front of the house, an 
oak-paneled room with a high white-molded ceil¬ 
ing. Tall bookcases flanked the fireplace and 
filled the opposite end, and behind the wide- 
meshed screens of dull gold in their narrow doors 
the tooled backs of deep red and blue and green 
morocco volumes made a plaid of color against 
the brown woodwork. In narrow frames of gold, 
a pair of soft-colored aquatints hung between 
high French windows over which were drawn 
curtains of pale yellow. The mantel on the 
right was of gray stone, and a pile of oak logs 
smoldered on the hearth. 

They sat down before the fire. Behind them 


196 


HIGH HURDLES 


the only light in the room burned low from a 
deep-shaded table lamp. 

All day Harry had anticipated this moment. 
Now that it was realized he was confused and 
silent. 

The evening was beginning badly. This was 
not the kind of evening he had intended it to be. 
Still in the back of his brain was the longing to 
confide in her. Vainly he hoped that he might 
induce some confidence on her part which would 
enable him to reciprocate with a confiding of his 
own disappointments. And again there came to 
him the sharp warning to let his grief remain 
unvoiced. 

He studied her features: the straight red 
mouth, the delicate nose with the narrow nos¬ 
trils, the wide-set eyes, and the cloud of flame 
above the white brow. 

Voices sounded in the hall below, and a minute 
later the room seemed filled with people. In 
the soft light Harry recognized a few familiar 
faces. 

He found himself shaking hands with immac¬ 
ulately dressed, smooth-shaven men who pro¬ 
fessed a hearty pleasure in meeting him, and he 
spoke with studied politeness to half a dozen 


HIGH HURDLES 197 

young women appropriately gowned to match 
their partners. 

They went down to dinner. On his right he 
found, with ill-concealed annoyance, a young 
woman who persisted in a search for mutual 
Bostonian acquaintances. He answered politely 
in the negative. Through the piled mass of 
flowers in the center of the white cloth he caught 
fleeting glances of Beatrice Wheatley. The 
shades of the candles threw her face into shadow, 
but he sensed a quick reaction as their eyes met. 
With a sudden sense of his obligations, he con¬ 
versed with the women on either side of him. 

The butler filled the wide-brimmed cham¬ 
pagne glass. 

The girl beside Harry shouted across the 
table: “I got it at that new shop on Michigan 
Avenue. They have the sweetest things you 
ever saw, and very reasonable, considering.” 

On his left a bronze-haired woman in her 
early thirties hazarded a question: “Do you go 
regularly to the concerts? Kreisler plays so 
beautifully. He will be at the Auditorium next 
Friday and Saturday.” 

Harry was hardly conscious of his answer. 
They were pleasant and intelligent people, and 


198 


HIGH HURDLES 


he appreciated their frank cordiality, but to¬ 
night he could not find interest in the inconse¬ 
quential topics of the dinner table. 

In the deep, soft seat of the limousine he 
found himself sitting beside Beatrice Wheatley. 
“You were very quiet at dinner,” she said. For 
the moment Harry did not answer. “I thought 
we had such a nice party. There were several 
people there, in particular, whom you must see a 
lot of.” 

She looked very small, lost in the loose folds 
of her cloak. Her glowing hair touched his shoul¬ 
der as the car shot past another automobile. 

“I had a very pleasant time,” he finally 
answered. “If I was quiet, you mustn’t think 
it was because I wasn’t enjoying myself. I just 
felt that way to-night. You know how it is 
sometimes.” 

“Has anything gone wrong?” she asked. “I’m 
so sorry.” She spoke in a voice so low that 
Harry barely caught the words. Then he real¬ 
ized that he had not answered her question; his 
silence had been an affirmation. On his hand he 
suddenly felt her small gloved fingers, a slight 
pressure, that was all, but he did not need to see 
her eyes to know her sincerity. 


i 


HIGH HURDLES 


199 


The automobile crossed the river, gliding 
swiftly over the smooth block pavement. A fine 
rain was falling, and through the moist glass the 
lights shone large and blurred. At the library 
a wall of skyscrapers lifted their dark front along 
the west side of the avenue, and on the east 
extended the barren desert of Grant Park and 
the long canon cut of a railroad. Harry recalled 
that first morning in Chicago when he had looked 
out across the lake front. He had felt very 
helpless that morning, and yet, as he looked 
back, he wondered why life had seemed so hope¬ 
less. More rapidly than he had ever dared to 
hope the material things which he required were 
already coming within his grasp. What good 
were they to him now? 

In Ellen’s companionship he had recognized 
a blending of all the elements that he desired. 
And now the only woman toward whom he might 
turn was Beatrice Wheatley, the wife of another 
man. 

They alighted in the glare of lights under a 
sheltering canopy. In the ballroom Harry saw 
the woman who had sat on his left at dinner, 
and in a moment he was beside her. She danced 
beautifully. Then some one cut in and he found 


200 


HIGH HURDLES 


himself with another partner. Occasionally he 
saw Beatrice Wheatley. She danced continu¬ 
ously, her gold hair marking her presence. 
Once they swirled near to each other. She was 
dancing with an elderly man who moved in 
studied steps along the floor. 

“Aren’t you ever going to dance with me?” 
she called out as they passed. He smiled and 
nodded assent. 

A few minutes later he found her, the center 
of a little group o£men, all claiming her. She 
sighted Harry at a distance. 

“The last shall be first,” she announced. 
“Anyway, I promised Mr. Gray a dance a long 
while ago.” 

Harry had danced almost continuously that 
evening and with enjoyment. But not until now 
had he felt that complete sensuous abandon that 
only two dancers in perfect synchronism can 
experience. He held Beatrice Wheatley’s slim 
body close to him, her hair brushing his face. 
Beyond that he did not feel her presence, so 
perfect was the harmony of their steps. 

The music quickened in a mad finale, and they 
seemed to sweep around the room. High, white 
walls, glittering with gold and the white luster 


HIGH HURDLES 


201 


of the lights, reeled past them. Then, suddenly, 
the music ended, and he looked down to see her 
face upturned to him, her eyes sparkling, her 
cheeks flushed. 

“Harry, you dance wonderfully.” Her voice 
was almost breathless. Reluctantly he released 
her. Already men were at her side pleading for 
the next dance. 

“Harry,” she cried to him, “you must dance 
with me again.” 

He smiled assent. 

“And, Harry, you must take me home when 
I go, and Albert can drop you at your door. 
You’ll never in the world get a taxi at this time 
of night.” 

It was nearly dawn when Harry and Beatrice 
Wheatley entered her limousine. The night was 
dark but clear, the air biting with the black 
coldness of early morning. The city lay dark, 
silent, and deserted, except in front of the hotel, 
where sound and movement and lights of auto¬ 
mobiles carrying home the departing guests, 
brightened the picture. 

Beyond that single indication of life the city 
stretched interminable under the blank sky, 
street lights illuminating empty sidewalks, tall 


202 


HIGH HURDLES 


fronts of buildings lifting cheerless windows 
into the night. 

For a few minutes neither spoke, then he 
heard her voice low and clear beside him. 
“Please don’t misunderstand me, Harry” — he 
was conscious that she was resuming their brief 
conversation of the early evening — “but if you 
are in trouble, and I can help, you won’t hesi¬ 
tate to let me, will you?” 

“Of course; but there isn’t anything any one 
can do, I guess. I do want to tell you some 
time —” 

She interrupted him, and he became aware 
that she was preoccupied with her own thoughts; 
that she was trying to tell him something. 

“You’ve probably wondered why I am always 
alone at home, ever since you have known me.” 
Her voice was low, clear, and impersonal. “Per¬ 
haps people have intimated, unkindly or other¬ 
wise. You see, Charley and I never have really 
pulled together. We ran off and got married 
like the couple of crazy young things that we 
were, and then we didn’t get along, and it 
became worse and worse. I don’t suppose there 
ever could have been any real love between us, 
or it wouldn’t have died so easily; it couldn’t 


HIGH HURDLES 


203 


have. But at all events I didn’t see why I 
shouldn’t get elsewhere the companionship he 
refused me, and then — well, perhaps you know 
he drank — drank abominably.” 

With tense interest Harry waited for her to 
continue. Already he knew what she would 
tell him. The realization staggered him. She 
spoke again, her voice pitched slightly higher. 
4 ‘That was why Charley went away. We have 
agreed that it is the best thing to do. It will be 
a surprise to some people and no surprise to 
others. In two months we shall be free of each 
other, irrevocably. There can be no scandal; it 
is just a mutual agreement. It will be much the 
best thing for both of us.” 

The car stopped in front of her house, and he 
walked with her to the door. “No, don’t ring!” 
she commanded. “Jennie always sits up for 
me, and I don’t want to wake the whole house¬ 
hold. You see, I carry a latchkey, like a regular 
man.” 

For a moment she stood framed in the open 
doorway. He took her hand and held it 
between his own. “Of course there’s nothing 
I can do,” he blurted, “but you know how sorry 
I am.” 


204 


HIGH HURDLES 


“You’re a very dear boy, Harry.” She 
laughed in a low, clear tone. “Don’t let’s talk 
any more about it. And now it’s very late, and 
I shall catch cold standing here. Good-night, 
and thank you for taking care of me.” 


VIII 


For two weeks Harry waited before he could 
answer Ellen’s letter. Now and then would 
come an impulse ‘to write to her and wish her the 
happiness which she sought. Then would come 
a revulsion of feeling. There was still a chance. 
Might he not dare to go to her and once and 
forever win or lose with one final appeal? Two 
things restrained him. Deep in his heart he 
felt that he was defeated, and his pride curbed 
his desire. And even more strongly Beatrice 
Wheatley held him in an invisible leash from 
which he struggled at times to escape; to which 
he more frequently submitted gladly. 

When he had met her that evening at 
Carleton’s he had been attracted by her mag¬ 
netic personality, her intuition, and her striking 
physical charms. He had felt safe in the fact 
that she was married and had allowed himself to 
play with the fascinating fire of her companion¬ 
ship. Then had come the startling news of her 
pending divorce. She would be free. The 


206 HIGH HURDLES 

knowledge staggered him. Should he withdraw 
or continue? 

“Is there a chance?” he asked himself — “and 
if there is, would such a marriage prove happy?” 

In his uncertainty he avoided her, afraid of 
that physical something that she possessed 
that dulled his reason and led him blindly along 
the path of desire. 

Spring was in the air. Already the trees in 
the parks were breaking into green. The ice 
was gone from the lake and the sky was a deeper 
blue. 

Harry was working hard at the office. It was 
work that he enjoyed, and he went at it with the 
spirit of a sportsman. Perhaps there was more 
in the attitude than he realized. Business was 
now an occupation through which he found 
mental relief; it was no longer the means to a 
desired end. Occasionally he lunched with Fish 
and enjoyed the amiable comradeship of his 
superior. Thus the days drifted by. 

When he finally wrote to Ellen it was a brief 
note. He wrote honestly. He told her that he 
believed he was a different man from the Harry 
Gray she had known. With equal frankness he 
spoke of his dislike for Arthur Clark. There 


HIGH HURDLES 


207 


were no implications in his letter that he wished 
a final chance, but a woman might read between 
the lines. 

Then he called on Beatrice Wheatley. To 
his surprise, she did not comment on the two 
weeks that had passed since he had last seen 
her. Together they drank tea before the fire, 
while from the open French windows the air 
cooled the heated room with the moist touch of 
the springtime. 

Neither was at ease, and he left finally with 
the feeling that each had been acting a part 
that was more or less distasteful. 

A week later he received a note from her 
asking him to tea on the following Friday. A 
half dozen people were in the gray drawing¬ 
room, and for an hour, bored but courteous, 
Harry chatted with the women and the two 
men about the tea table. Purposely he lingered, 
and when the last guest had gone he sank back 
in th£ divan with relief. Beatrice Wheatley 
smiled at him across the table. Outside, the 
light was fading. Noiselessly the maid entered 
and drew the curtains; the abrupt darkening of 
the room accentuated the ruddy glow of the 
firelight. 


208 


HIGH HURDLES 


“Come over here,” he commanded; “I want 
to talk with you.” 

She looked at him for a moment, amazed at 
the tone of his voice. Then she got up from the 
low hassock on which she had been sitting and 
sank down in the opposite end of the divan, 
regarding him with a puzzled inquisitiveness in 
her wide-set eyes. 

“I want to talk with you, Beatrice,” he said 
simply. “I know you will not misunderstand 
me.” 

Then he told her of Ellen, of the long struggle 
of the past year, of the letter. She listened, her 
eyes fixed on his, a faint flush tinging her cheeks. 
“Do you still love her?” she asked. 

He reached out his arm and grasped her 
slender hand where it lay outstretched on the 
divan. 

“Beatrice, I have gone over it, over and again. 
I love her. God knows, I’ve wavered at times, 
but deep down inside of me she has been the 
one thing that I cannot forget. Perhaps it is 
all a mistake; probably it is. She will marry 
him, and I will go on as well as I can. But I’m 
not going to give in now — no, not so long as 
there is a chance.” 


HIGH HURDLES 


209 


He paused for a moment, uncertain whether to 
go on. She felt his fingers tighten over hers. 
Then he went on, his words tumbling upon each 
other in hurried sentences: “I’m going to say 
what I shouldn’t, Beatrice, but please don’t 
misunderstand me. Ever since I first met you 
I have cared for you. For a long time I didn’t 
realize how much I cared. You see, I didn’t 
know. It never occurred to me that you were 
not happily married. Then you told me, and 
it sort of bowled me over. There’s so much in 
being with a person constantly; I suddenly 
realized how much I have grown to care for 
you.” 

A log in the fireplace collapsed in a quick 
spurt of flame. He saw her eyes misted; her 
fingers seemed to draw him to her. For a 
second he wavered. Then he continued, in a 
low, tense voice: 

“You see, I have tried to weigh it all; to 
realize that mine is a lost cause. And yet, in 
spite of it all, I can’t give up, yet. It must 
sound awfully foolish, all this, but I’ve got to tell 
you how much I care for you, even if there is 
some one else who comes first. You see what 
I mean. I can’t go on, and yet I must tell you.” 


210 


HIGH HURDLES 


He rose abruptly and stood with his back to 
the fire. “I don’t know just what I am going 
to do, but I am going to play my final card. I 
know, as I know there’s a to-morrow, that I 
truly love her, and until all chance is gone I’m 
going to fight ahead. Do you understand?” 

Suddenly she stood beside him. Again he 
felt the magic of her presence. He seized her 
almost roughly and looked down into her 
upturned face. “Don’t think that this has been 
easy. I never knew that a man could care two 
ways. But you’ve been so square and fine to 
me, I’ve got to tell you now that there’s some 
one else that means so much to me that I can’t 
forget it all.” 

There were tears on her cheeks; he felt her 
tremble; then she raised her hand and drew his 
face down toward her; he felt her lips against 
his cheek. “You are a dear, Harry; God bless 
you. I want you to be happy — so much 
happier than I have ever been.” . . . 

In the weeks that followed he worked 
furiously, with a determination that seemed 
invincible. The climax to his plans came more 
quickly than he expected. He had been lunch¬ 
ing with Fish, and they were sitting opposite 


HIGH HURDLES 


211 


each other at the little table, lingering over 
their coffee and cigars. 

“I asked you to lunch with me to-day, Harry, 
with a purpose.” Fish tapped his cigar ash in 
the empty cup. “We have been talking a good 
deal about you, and I don’t mind telling you 
that we are pleased with the way you have 
taken hold.” He regarded Harry for a minute, 
a pleasant smile in the corners of his eyes. 

“I like the work, and I like the people I’m 
working for; if I’m satisfactory, I guess that’s 
the answer.” 

Fish laughed. “Fine,” he continued. “Now, 
listen to me. This is just a selling office out 
here — all it ever can be. All our mills are in 
New England. It isn’t a question of selling; 
it’s a question of increasing production. What 
we propose to do is to send you back east and 
give you a schooling in the other end of the 
game. Frankly, we need executives, and you, 
right now, constitute our sole growing executive 
material. You are young, I realize that, but 
youth should be no handicap. You’ve got the 
stuff; you’re no quitter.” 

“I’m no quitter!” Harry repeated. Then an 
odd smile twitched his lips. 


212 


HIGH HURDLES 


“You are willing to go back east and work 
along the lines I have suggested?” 

“Yes, I am!” 

“Good.” Fish thrust out his hand across the 
table. “This isn’t any bit of philanthropy or 
altruism on our part, Harry; we believe in you. 
And, incidentally, your salary will be adequate; 
we have discussed that.” 

That evening he walked out to the lake front 
where Lincoln Park swings a broad esplanade 
along the curved shore. The sky was luminous 
with stars, and the little waves lapped audibly 
against the stones of the sea wall. Far out on 
the horizon the lights of a steamer winked and 
shimmered above the rim of dark water. The 
spaciousness of the sky and the lake quieted 
him. Here he could think. 

Next week he would leave for Boston. He 
would return as he had hoped he might some 
day return. He had made good. Perhaps this 
separation from the city on the lake front would 
be final. He realized that he would in all 
probability never come back to live in Chicago. 

Next week he would arrive in Boston. He 
had grasped the opportunity chiefly because it 
would give him a final opportunity to ask Ellen 


HIGH HURDLES 


213 


to marry him. The chance was small; he 
realized that. She was practically engaged to 
another man. She had repeatedly told him 
that she did not love him. 

Then he thought of Beatrice Wheatley. Did 
he love Beatrice, after all? Was it he who 
might be wrong? His instinct answered, 
promptly and unequivocatingly. It was Ellen 
whom he loved. The die was cast. 

They said good-bye in the gray drawing-room, 
and when the few self-conscious and conven¬ 
tional things were said he took her hand and 
raised it to his lips. That was all. He did not 
dare to look at her, nor did he turn back to 
glance again at the house as he went down the 
sidewalk. 

As the train passed through Gary, he stood on 
the platform of the observation car and looked 
back at the city. Over Chicago a vast gray 
smoke cloud stained the blue sky. Beyond the 
tall chimneys of the steel mills the lake gleamed 
a dazzling blue. His whole person suddenly 
seemed surcharged with gratitude. This vast, 
terrible city of restless, indomitable energy had 
welcomed him, encouraged him, and thrust 
him forward. 


214 


HIGH HURDLES 


With a feeling of new confidence he walked 
back into the train.... 

The morning was gray, and a fog, rich with 
the flavor of salt water, misted Boston, as Harry 
left the train. High in the sky the sun, a dull 
orange disk sharply outlined, seemed to mount 
precipitously through the dim vapor. He trans¬ 
ferred his baggage to a shabby taxi and found 
himself rattling through the narrow, twisting 
streets. 

Before he left Chicago he had asked for a 
week of leeway before he should undertake his 
new duties. He wanted these few days free 
from business interruption to determine his true 
status with Ellen Davenport. An hour, perhaps 
a few minutes, would tell the story. For some 
unaccountable reason, he felt certain of success. 
But should his cause be truly lost, what would 
he do then? He thrust the question from him. 
There could be no alternative. 

He looked out of the open window of the 
taxi. Every street, every building, had a 
familiar, friendly look. He recalled a summer 
spent in England when he was a boy. How 
like London was this old New England city; 
an atmosphere of stability and decorous gentility 


HIGH HURDLES 215 

permeated it; it was an Old World place 
compared with Chicago. 

At the hotel he secured an inexpensive room 
and at one o’clock ate a leisurely luncheon. 
While he ate he debated in his mind each detail 
in his plan. At first he was tempted to tel¬ 
ephone Ellen and announce his arrival, but he 
concluded that it would be wiser to run the 
chance of finding her at home and present him¬ 
self in person. 

It was three o’clock when he rang her door¬ 
bell. The maid who opened the door was 
strange to him. Was Miss Davenport at home? 
he asked. He was informed that she would 
not return until after five. She was at the 
office. 

In the street he felt a sudden depression of 
spirit. He had expected to find her at home; 
he had nerved himself for the meeting. It had 
not occurred to him that she would still be 
occupied with the work she had undertaken 
over a year ago. Aimlessly he crossed Marl¬ 
borough and Beacon Streets to the river. The 
sun had burned away the fog, and the basin 
extended its broad, smooth surface to the 
Cambridge shore, a sheet of blue, palpitating 


216 


HIGH HURDLES 


water. A few gulls wheeled gray against the 
sky. It was tranquil, and the sun warmed 
him pleasantly. For two hours he walked along 
the river bank immersed in his thoughts. At 
five o’clock he turned hurriedly back toward 
the Davenport house. 

As he turned the corner he caught sight of a 
slender figure walking toward him. She was 
more than a block away, but he instantly 
recognized her. It was Ellen. A strange 
calmness came over him; he was conscious of an 
unnatural composure. 

He walked to meet her. She was unconscious 
of his presence. Fear seized him that some 
unexpected disillusionment might await him; 
perhaps in the lonely hours he had exaggerated 
his memory of her charm and beauty. He saw 
her slim feet in low tan oxfords and her slender 
ankles, the smooth grace of the gray skirt and 
coat. He raised his eyes. Under the dark 
straw hat he saw her face. A triumphant 
feeling of reassurance came to him. She was 
more lovely than he had ever dreamed her to be. 

Their eyes met. “Ellen! ” 

She looked at him, startled as at the sight of 
an apparition. Then she regained her com- 


HIGH HURDLES 


217 


posure. “Harry — I never dreamed that you 
were in Boston. You are back for a visit, I 
suppose?” She spoke the commonplaces with 
evident effort. 

He turned, and they walked slowly toward 
the house. 

“May I come in, Ellen?” he asked. “I want 
to talk to you. There is so much that I must 
say to you.” 

She hesitated for an answer. “I don’t know, 
Harry. It can do no good. I am afraid it 
would only be hard for both of us.” 

“You cannot deny me a chance. Ellen, I 
am ready to take your answer. I shall not 
speak of these things again. But it is only fair 
now to hear me out.” 

Within the hall he helped her off with her 
coat. An impulse swept him to seize the 
slender shoulders. She turned and led the way 
up the stairs. Beneath the brim of her hat he 
saw the flash of her dark eyes and the perfect 
oval of her face. 

“Come,” she said. “We will go up to the 
library and have tea.” He followed blindly. 

It was all the same, but instead of the boy and 
the girl whom he remembered in this familiar 


218 


HIGH HURDLES 


environment there were now two new individ¬ 
uals. He was incomparably older, and in Ellen 
he saw a woman far lovelier than the girl of 
yesterday. 

“I have come, Ellen — ” 

“Don’t,” she interrupted, “please. Why must 
you ask me again when I can only refuse?” 

“Why must you refuse?” She was silent. 

“Answer me. Don’t you owe me some sort 
of answer? Ellen,” he went on, “are you 
engaged to Arthur Clark? Are you going to 
marry him?” 

“I thought I wrote to you,” she answered. 
“I have even felt since that I wrote you almost 
too much.” 

“You wrote that you intended to marry Clark, 
but that you were not engaged.” 

“Please” — she tried to smile — “please, 
Harry, shan’t we have tea?” She rose from 
her chair and moved toward the bell to ring 
for the maid. 

With an impetuous movement Harry seized 
her by the arm and forced her to face him. The 
level light of the late afternoon sun illumined 
her face. He saw an almost frightened look 
in her dark eyes. Her full red lips were drawn 



SLOWLY SHE LIFTED HER FACE TO HIS 












HIGH HURDLES 219 

back slightly from her white teeth. He held her 
unresistingly by the arm. 

“I have loved you for too many years, I have 
suffered too much and passed through too many 
temptations” — he looked down at her face as 
he spoke, an intense passion in his blue eyes — 
“to be offered a cup of tea when I tell you that 
I love you. I will not be put off. I don’t 
believe you love Clark or you would be engaged 
to him to-day. And because I know you don’t 
love him, I am going to make you love me.” 

“I cannot marry you.” She turned her head 
away from him and he saw that her eyes were 
wet. 

“Is there a reason that I do not know?” he 
demanded — “some reason why you cannot love 
me?” 

She faced him quickly, resentment in her face. 
“Yes; I cannot respect you, and I can never 
love a man whom I cannot respect.” 

“Cannot respect? Cannot respect me?” he 
repeated. “I don’t understand.” 

She looked at him scornfully. “Please let go 
my arm.” His hand relaxed and fell at his side. 

“Why do you not respect me?” 

“This is very unpleasant, and I think quite 


220 


HIGH HURDLES 


unnecessary — this whole discussion — but if 
you will know, I shall tell you that I can never 
love a man who has lost my respect, and I can¬ 
not respect a man who plays a double game. 
I don’t care so much what you might have done 
before you first asked me to marry you, but, 
after you did ask me, for you to go around as 
you did, and I believe have done, with the kind 
of women that — that —” She dropped down 
into the chair. 

A wave of realization swept him. “Who told 
you these infernal lies?” She glanced sharply 
at him. “Did Clark tell you these lies?” Her 
eyes were looking far out through the window. 
He could not read her face. “Women; yes, 
I have seen much of several women, as fine 
women as ever lived; they gave me sympathy 
and affection and believed in me, while you 
listened to lies told behind my back.” 

“I am going.” She saw him as he had never 
seemed before. His jaw was clenched; there 
were hard lines about his lips; his eyes were 
hot with anger. Behind him the light seemed 
to magnify him. “I am going,” he continued, 
“and I shall not return until I know the truth, 
until there has been a reckoning.” 


HIGH HURDLES 


221 


He found his hat in the gloom of the lower 
hall and flung his overcoat over his arm. In the 
room she heard the door slam behind him; she 
heard the click of his heels as he walked quickly 
down the sidewalk. 

As Harry turned the corner he became aware 
that a man was approaching from the opposite 
direction. It was Arthur Clark. Instinctively 
they faced each other. 

“Well, well. How are you, Gray?” Clark 
held out his hand; then his eyes met Harry’s 
and his arm fell slowly. 

“This is very fortunate.” Harry’s voice was 
hard and without agitation. “You seem to be 
on your way to call on Miss Davenport, possibly 
to entertain her with some interesting infor¬ 
mation about me” — he raised his voice slightly 
— “some of your lies and insinuations about 
my behavior with women.” 

A flush colored Clark’s face. “You are trying 
to call me a liar. I advise you to hold your 
tongue.” 

“Do you deny it?” 

“Perhaps you forget the gay little parties you 
used to attend?” 

“Since I first asked Ellen Davenport to marry 


222 HIGH HURDLES 

me I have never committed an act that she could 
not know.” 

“And perhaps you reconcile entertaining 
affairs with Chicago divorcees. Perhaps —” 

The overcoat fell to the pavement, and before 
Clark could raise his arm the flat of Harry’s 
palm swept his face with a stinging blow. 

“Drag in my name — that’s my affair alone; 
but, you dirty hound — you won’t. Look out 
for yourself! I’m going to kill you.” 

The wide street was deserted. Even the 
houses seemed empty; all was peace and 
respectability. Through Harry’s brain flashed 
strangely contrasting pictures. He recalled 
the night when Clark had called him the name 
that had burned into his soul; he saw again 
Red Devon’s face hard against his own; he felt 
the stinging blows given and taken in the gym¬ 
nasium when he had boxed with Hennessey; he 
saw Alice Hagen with her gentle sympathy, 
Beatrice Wheatley with her friendliness, and 
then he remembered Ellen’s words: “I can 
never love a man whom I cannot respect.” 

There was a moment’s silence as they stood 
facing each other. Then Harry spoke: “I 
want no misunderstanding. This is an old score, 


HIGH HURDLES 


223 


and there is also a new one. You called me a 
quitter once. I have that to settle. But more 
than that you have lied about me behind my 
back in order to do me harm in Ellen Daven¬ 
port’s estimation. You will apologize to me.” 

“Do you want me to fight or listen to your 
lecture?” There was a sneer in Clark’s voice. 
Instantly they put up their fists; then they 
closed on each other. 

Once, only once, did Clark break through 
Harry’s guard. It was a glancing blow with 
little force, but the sting of Clark’s fist against 
his cheek maddened him. With a sudden suc¬ 
cession of blows he beat Clark back. Before his 
onslaught he felt Clark weaken. There was an 
opening, and his fist struck hard in the center 
of the white face before him. Before Clark 
could recover he struck again and again. It 
was over. Clark had crumpled to the pave¬ 
ment, his face smeared with blood. There was 
a dazed look in his eyes. “I’ve had enough,” 
he muttered. 

Harry bent over him. “Do you apologize to 
me?” he asked. 

“I apologize.” 

“Then get up and let’s clear out of here.” 


224 


HIGH HURDLES 


He helped Clark to his feet and wiped his own 
face with his handkerchief. Purpling bruises 
on the white skin marked where Harry’s blows 
had fallen. “I think that’s about all,” he con¬ 
tinued; “but for the future the less I see of you 
the better.” 

Never once had the outcome been in question, 
not once had Harry felt the necessity of exerting 
himself to the utmost. It showed the physical 
change that the past year had made in him. 
For a minute he watched the retreating figure, 
but there was no light of exultation in his face, 
his eyes were strained and serious. 

“Well” — he spoke half aloud — “I guess 
that’s about the wind-up.” 

The next morning he called on Uncle Bill 
Holman. He was standing in front of his desk, 
and when the door closed behind Harry, he flung 
his arms about the younger man as a father 
would embrace his son. 

“Uncle Bill —” Harry began as soon as their 
greeting was over. 

“Never mind, Harry. I know what you’re 
going to say. You left me that day like a wild 
Indian, but I understood. I’ve followed you 
ever since, more closely than you have realized. 


HIGH HURDLES 225 

I’m proud of you. If your father could only 
know the man you have made of yourself!” 

For a few minutes they talked of Phelps 
Gray. Then Holman changed the subject. 
“If you had not come on here when you did,” 
he said, “I would have sent for you in a few 
weeks, anyway. Your father left a pretty 
badly muddled estate. For a while it seemed 
as though his liabilities would more than wipe 
out the assets. I wrote to you at one time to 
that effect. Since then, however” — he paused 
to emphasize his words — “some of these ven¬ 
tures of your father’s have worked out more or 
less successfully. As a matter of fact, I believe 
you may be reasonably sure that you’ll have a 
living.” 

Harry sat quietly, unmoved by the signifi¬ 
cance of Holman’s words. “Please don’t mis¬ 
understand me, Uncle Bill. It’s wonderful to 
hear this, of course, but, do you know, the best 
thing I have done has been to find myself. And 
now, somehow, all this idea of money seems 
a very different thing. I wanted to marry a 
girl,” he continued. “I guess you know all 
about it” — Holman nodded his big gray head 
— “so I tried to make a man out of myself, and 


226 


HIGH HURDLES 


to make a place for myself. But” — he smiled 
grimly — “the girl is going to marry some one 
else.” 

He felt Holman’s hand on his shoulder. 
Then in an outburst of hurried words the 
barrier of his reserve was shattered and he told 
Holman the whole story, even the meeting with 
Ellen and his encounter with Clark on the day 
before. 

“I guess it’s all over now,” he concluded. 

Holman struck the table a blow with his fist. 
“Not much is it all over,” he thundered. 
“You’ve battled everywhere and everybody 
for this girl except the girl herself. Make her 
marry you; kidnap her if necessary. I tell 
you if she has half the sense you think she has 
you can make her marry you. Now go, and 
don’t let me see you again until you’ve settled 
that question.” 

That afternoon he went out to Cambridge. 
Ellen, he knew, would be all day at the office, 
and he could not see her until late in the day, or 
in the evening. And he wanted to see the uni¬ 
versity again. 

The grass was green between the paths, and 
the sunshine flooded the ancient buildings with 


HIGH HURDLES 


227 


light from a cloudless sky. Young men with 
books beneath their arms were hurrying from 
their classrooms. 

Guardedly Harry looked at the faces of the 
men he passed. He did not want to be recog¬ 
nized yet; there would be ample time to look 
up old friends. Now he wanted to be alone, to 
see and to think unaffected by others. His steps 
led him past the old granite entrance of Uni¬ 
versity Hall. There he had received his sentence 
from the dean, a sentence that had altered his 
life irrevocably. An impulse seized him and he 
turned up the steps. In the outer office he wrote 
a few words on his card; some minutes later he 
was told that the dean would see him. 

“I came in,” Harry explained, “just to tell 
you that I appreciate to-day what you did for 
me when you told me I must leave Harvard. I 
didn’t understand it then, because I didn’t 
understand Harvard or myself. I thought it was 
just a sort of playground, a place where you 
spent four pleasant years.” 

Across the desk the friendly gray eyes watched 
him: “Please go on. I want to hear it all.” 

“Now,” Harry continued, “I see what Har¬ 
vard can do if the fellow she is trying to lead 


228 


HIGH HURDLES 


will only give her half a chance. I was a fool. 
I had a few friends and tried to live in a little 
idle world. I didn’t try to become a part of the 
life here, and I resented every effort to stir me. 
I guess I was a pretty fair sample of the worst 
type of snob, and if I’m not that now it’s be¬ 
cause you forced me to get out of the world what 
I would not get out of Harvard.” 

For a half hour they talked together, and 
when Harry finally took up his hat to go, the 
dean walked with him to the door. They shook 
hands heartily. 

“Thank you for coming to see me, Gray. I 
appreciate it.” The dean put a hand on Harry’s 
shoulder. “And I should like to say,” he con¬ 
tinued, “that I shall think of you hereafter as 
the kind of a man that Harvard is proud of.” 

From the hotel he called Ellen on the tele¬ 
phone. “I am coming to see you now,” he said. 
“Perhaps this may be the last time, but you 
must see me; I have some things to say. May 
I come now? Will you be alone?” 

Her voice was calm, but he detected an agi¬ 
tated indecision in her assent. 

The taxicab carried him rapidly through the 
crowded streets. Through the open windows 


HIGH HURDLES 


229 


came the soft warm air of the peaceful after¬ 
noon. He wondered if he might read a favorable 
omen in the quiet loveliness of the fading day. 

Her voice called down to him from the upper 
hall. “Is that you, Harry?” He wondered if she 
had expected Clark to call. The thought caused 
him to smile grimly. “Come up to the library.” 

She met him at the door, calm, apparently 
undisturbed. He felt a thrill of admiration for 
her composure. Beneath this unmoved surface 
she must be repressing wonderment at his abrupt 
action. It was only yesterday that he had flung 
himself from this same room. Did she know of 
his encounter with Clark? 

He drove directly at the subject. “I met 
Arthur Clark yesterday when I left here. He 
was on his way to see you. It was he who lied 
to you about me. He admitted it. I thrashed 
him.” 

They had walked to the bay windows, and 
she stood again as yesterday, facing the west, 
the sunlight clear upon her. “I know that,” 
she replied. 

“You do not love Clark,” he continued. 

She raised her hand in an appealing gesture, 
as though she would check further discussion, 


230 


HIGH HURDLES 


but Harry continued: “If you loved him, you 
would have told him so; you would be now 
engaged. He has almost convinced you by his 
persistency, but in your heart you know that 
what I am telling you is the truth.” 

“I am not engaged to Arthur. You are right 
in that.” 

“Are you going to marry him?” 

She flushed hotly. “Is there any reason why 
you should catechize me?” 

“Yes, there is every reason. It is my right.” 

“I am afraid I can’t see that it is.” 

“I love you. Isn’t that reason enough? Isn’t 
it reason enough that I have worked for you 
and have come back for you? You love me; 
down deep in your heart, you know it. You shall 
marry me!” 

“I have no intention of marrying any one.” 

“Not Clark?” he questioned. 

“No, I shall not marry him. I have no inten¬ 
tion of marrying any one.” 

She started to sit down, but he caught her by 
the shoulder. “You must stand while we talk 
this way.” He spoke almost roughly. “I must 
talk to you as a man talks to another man. And 
we must talk quickly. Your father will be com- 


HIGH HURDLES 


231 


ing home almost any minute now. I can’t be 
interrupted. Why do you say you have no inten¬ 
tion of marrying any one? Why shouldn’t you 
marry?” 

“My work.” 

“Your work!” He gazed at her dumfounded. 
“Your work,” he repeated. “You put an insigni¬ 
ficant job ahead of the biggest thing in life?” 

She was angry again. “Do you think a girl 
should idle away her time when she can do some¬ 
thing worth while — when she can provide for 
herself?” 

“That isn’t the end of life,” he retorted. “You 
are pleased with your success, but your place at 
the office will be filled again before you are out 
of the building. You have done a fine thing and 
done it well, but” — he flushed with resentment 

— “do you mean to put a miserable job in the 
scales against my love?” He was very close to 
her now, but he did not touch her. “I love you 

— Ellen. For God’s sake, be honest. You do 
love me, don’t you, Ellen?” 

Her eyes were wet, and the color was gone 
from her cheeks. He saw her breast rise and 
fall with emotion. 

“Ellen!” He caught her in his arms. Her dark 


232 HIGH HURDLES 

hair touched his face. “Look at me!” he com¬ 
manded. 

Slowly she lifted her face to his. His arms 
strengthened about her, and he felt her warm 
lips against his own. Then suddenly she smoth¬ 
ered her face against his breast. 

“Ellen,” he whispered. “You love me?” 

“I love you,” she whispered. 


THE END 












JUN 4 r" 






































































